The VideoLAN Forums

-hey all,

This one is "raptor", created for "Goldeneye", but most of it works o.k. w 9x. Surprisingly, this works much better in XP, w "v1.0.0-rc1 latest nightly", than works w any of a dozen or so 'nix compiles (multiple distros) to date.

Goldeneye looks very promising so far, but doesn't play well w skins...yet. Have noticed some features that aren't alluded to by any info I've read, like:

-Starts default gui w its default size...nice!
-Switches betwix 2 video layouts (single window) while playing video. visualizations, or a dvd, seamlessly...very nice!
-Appears more resource conservative...nice!
-new codecs, more options and other mentioned advanced features, which haven't been fully explored yet...fun stuff!

Some problems observed w skins:

-Track title display ($N) appears hardcoded, cannot be optioned w "visible-attributes" like other text displays. This has been there forever, I think.
-Time displays (text) alighment position is different in XP compared to 'nix. Change one, affect the other, optimized for 'nix.
-DVD-play crashes (gui closes) on "stop", XP/linux.
-Zoom is faulty, works much better in 9x, tho corrects w "main layout-switching" to default video aspect-ratio.
-Crash on exit in XP, throws up an "VLC crash reporting" dialog on next start.
-Video-play occasionally hangs in 'nix, exit appears disabled,close from taskbar, recyling the skin-guis or cyling to/from qt-gui may remedy .
-Visualization fails in XP, sometimes fails in 'nix.

This is not a bug report, just a current status of experiences w VLC-1x, am sure most of these issues will be worked out over the near term, If nothing else, at least the default "qt-gui" works well.

I like where VLC-1x is headed, so will likely favor for future skins. Good to see "skin activity" moving forward the past 6 mos, lotta good ideas, interesting creations, great stuff happening.

black

5/29/09

Well, much to my dismay, this skin is causing problems w VLC. In-depth testing reveals VLC chokes on the second vout, causing "zoom" failure and excessive crashing. An assumed, neat new feature, is a mirage...the apparent, seamless, vout-switching doesn't fly right.

Consequently, "raptor" is being updated, losing the 2nd vout and forcing a seperate "playlist" window. So, the fully integrated skin is on hold, for now...back to a more conventional design.

black

Great to see this new skin!

You know you can submit it to the Skins2_Contest!

Then, could you detail the issues you have, maybe in the 1.0.0 section of this forum and please state clearly what is skins2 only and what is not, so we can fix?

- Zooming
zooming when multiple video tags are present could indeed lead to crashes.
A fix has been applied. (will be available for rc3)

- visualizations with XP or Linux
With raptor, you do have two video controls, but they lie in two different layouts within a single window. In that case, only one video control is active at one time. For music, it will be used. For videos, the visualization is just hidden for lack of a second active video control.

More generally speaking, you can now have as many video tags as you wish within a skins. vlc keeps track of all active video controls, and selects them in a fifo order. (first met, first chosen).

vlc (skins2) also copes with the following situations:
- two layouts, each with a video control of different size
- two layouts, one with a video control, one with two video controls.

In the latter case, visualisation is not lost when swapping from one layout to the other. It's just hidden and shown depending whether video controls are active or not.

- Hangings on Linux
On Linux, a design issue makes it difficult to avoid hangings. In a few words, vlc is highly multi-threaded and the underlying xlib library doesn't support multi-threading that well. I'm afraid this won't be solved until vlc 1.0 is released.

- Crashing at termination
This is a real issue, not yet solved. skins always crash on XP, sometimes do on Linux when exiting. It seems to be dependent on the version of qt4.... to be investigated.


Erwan10

hey Erwan10,

-What got my attention about zooming was that 0.9x did it effortlessly and 1.x borks...a lot more than expected. Don't expect the qt-base for each is that different, so, kinda implies that multiple vouts are screwing things. BTW, good to know that multiple video control functionality is for real, not just a fluke as imagined.

-On the "hang/freeze" issue, 'nix tends to bork on "play", where windows actually plays fine. Termination crashing is tolerable for awhile, its the hanging that blows. Qt4 is kept up-to-date w 'nix, the w32 nightlies, I expect are similarly updated.

-As I'm not a coder (sometimes hacker), wish I was more helpful here, but will keep digging around for clues. If there's anything I might do to help the cause, please...hollar!

-Thnx for looking stuff over, I really appreciate the input...

black