The VideoLAN Forums

I would like to see a forum for asking developer-related questions, such as how to use the VLC API to write a simple decoder? The API documentations on the website are known to be... uh... poorly written and outdated.

Either that, or maybe someone could update those webpages, maybe adding some examples? Looking at other people's code DOES help, but when trying to code it for the first time, you wonder which routines are actually NECESSARY for processing of the audio/video frames, and not just there for "completeness."

Well, most users prefer mailing lists as a way of communication. You can ask your questions to

vlc-devel@videolan.org (or vls-devel@videolan.org)

Or IRC

Well, most users prefer mailing lists as a way of communication. You can ask your questions to

vlc-devel@videolan.org (or vls-devel@videolan.org)

I should have known better than to post that topic - forgot about mailing lists

IRC - heh, I haven't used that medium in YEARS!

IRC rulezzzz.
The really l33t folks still hang out there MSN is for n00bs.

IRC rulezzzz.
The really l33t folks still hang out there MSN is for n00bs.

My 31337 years are long gone...

Web forums bay-bee...

I miss BBSs.

Anyway...

Just out of curiosity, what decoders are you planing to implement?

Just out of curiosity, what decoders are you planing to implement?

VideoLAN software does a great job of streaming live content in Linux, but it lacks *BSD's bktr driver support (versus V4L). I've written a skeleton capture that works but now I need to figure out what routines VLC (VLS later maybe) needs to process each frame.

I have some programming knowledge of C and learning more as I go. I figure I could do this - with a little help

The dummy module (modules/misc/dummy) have sceleton versions of nearly all types of modules. Also the v4l and dshow modules should be used as examples for you. What you basically need to do is to create an "access" type module and a "demux" type module. Then the raw frame should be passed to the "raw video" decoder.

The dummy module (modules/misc/dummy) have sceleton versions of nearly all types of modules. Also the v4l and dshow modules should be used as examples for you. What you basically need to do is to create an "access" type module and a "demux" type module. Then the raw frame should be passed to the "raw video" decoder.

The dummy routines are not quite skeletons, they are merely stubs (dummies hehe) - they mostly return NULLs or do nothing (duh). I understand the access-type module, but the demux I don't quite understand. Are the three main calls an AccessOpen, AccessClose and Read ?

Also, again from the v4l.c plugin, I don't see any routines specifically sending the frame to any kind of "decoder"...

I have queried the devel- mailing list but don't expect someone to write the whole thing for me

The three main calls of the access module are AccessOpen, AccessClose and Read. The three main calls of the demux module are DemuxOpen, DemuxClose and Demux. It is the Demux call that sends the frame to the decoder using es_out_Send. Note that the Accesss* and Demux* calls could be named anything. Their names are specified in the module header.

Just out of curiosity, what decoders are you planing to implement?

VideoLAN software does a great job of streaming live content in Linux, but it lacks *BSD's bktr driver support (versus V4L). I've written a skeleton capture that works but now I need to figure out what routines VLC (VLS later maybe) needs to process each frame.

I have some programming knowledge of C and learning more as I go. I figure I could do this - with a little help

piuk _C_
Iako iak cup cop :):):)