Last entry for this year ...
Okay so another year has come and gone. 'Q' DVD-Author has improved a lot and is now close to two years old. I will try to keep up the work on 'Q' DVD-Author as long as it takes to achieve a easy working, non-crashing, fully featured DVD authoring suit.
I have always wanted to creatre cross platform applications but until recently Qt was only released under GPL for Linux, then for Mac and Linux. Finally with Qt version 4.0 Trolltech has also released the windows version under GPL.
You say well that's all old news and you are probably right. One other thing missing so far was to have Windows running under Linux. I had Linux running under Windows using coLinux but I did not want to trade the Linux environment for Windows only to program.
So yesterday I compiled and installed QEmu. It all worked out like a dream. I booted my old Windows 98 installation CD and had it up and running in no time. After the neccesary upgrades to the system I had DirectX 8.0, Firefox, MinGW, and qt-4.1.0 working. Network and Sound were fairly straight forward as well.
So next step for me is to get some other linux distributions installed using QEMU. This way I can test the installation of 'Q' DVD-Author and ensure that it'll compile on these systems, without the need to ever reboot.
Currently I am planing in getting
Just to show you how easy it is, installing debian is as easy as getting the minimal CD image (30megs) and then type :
> qemu-img create debian.img 2G
> qemu -m 128 -localtime -soundhw es1370 -net nic -net user -cdrom `pwd`/debian-31r1a-i386-businesscard.iso -hda debian.img-boot d
That concludes this page and this year. I wish all of you a happy new year.
I hope you all had a few great days off work and enjoyed the holidays. I thought the one thing that was missing was some snow (at least in the greater DC area).
So this is for all of you who had no snow this christmas and who could not use xsnow ...
| I just released version Beta 0.1.0 . . . | |
What makes this version so special and made me switch to beta is that finally after two years I have all the major parts in 'Q' DVD-Author that I planed in having.
So what is changing with the beta status. The most important change is that I will now focus on fixing bugs and completing existing features rather then implementing new stuff. I will also use no the bug tracking system from SourceForge.
Here are the major changes that went in.
Check out the CHANGELOG file to see all the details.
At this point I want to thank all the folks who made the past few weeks miserable for me in providing feedback and bug reports for this release. Merry X-mas to all of you.
I will now play around with the slideshow dialog and work on the Copy/past functionality.
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Okay I have been busy tinkering on 'Q' DVD-Author's subtitles part. I have also fixed tons of bugs and improved some import/export filters. If you like the above screenshot you should go to http://www.starwreck.com download the movie and have a blast. My main focus is to get QDVDAuthor to beta and I am fairly close to this goal. Once I create my first DVD with subtitles I will switch to beta. From there on I hope I get to fix bugs and finish some functionality.
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Okay for all of you who don't want to download a 1:42h movie but still want to laugh, check out : http://media.putfile.com/WizardsofWinter-SM.
I also want to say thanx to John B. (Father John) who has supported me the past few weeks like no other before. He tracked down a ton of very usefull information, which will(or has already) make it into 'Q' DVD-Author.
'Q' DVD-Author in the news:
 | Patrick D. from The Linux Link Tech Show told me that 'Q' DVD-Author is featured in the current edition of the Linux Journal. Of course I had to buy the magazine and the article is quite positive. Only one thing I can't get around is the comment of the author on a bug he found. Now why did he not just tell me so I can fix it. Oh well, I guess now I know about the Audio bug.
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Since I was in a bookstore, I checked out the other Linux related magazines and was pleasantly surprised that at least three of them came including a Linux distribution on DVDs. One even had a Solaris x86 OS packed on.
So what is going on with 'Q' DVD-Author ... I am still hopefull to reach beta stage by November 27'th. I have started yet another import filter. This filter will load srt subtitle files.
I also implemented now the handling of pre/post commands for videos and menus. And lastly I started to implement some command line options, which will allow us to start QDVDAuthor from another tool (namely kino) and also to run QDVDAuthor in batch mode. if you type > qdvdauthor -h you will see the available options.
The last piece of news comes from Dan Dennedy, who told me of a patch to dvdauthor to include VOBUs automatically into mpeg2 video format which has no VOBUs.
Note: VOBU ->Video Object Unit<- are needed for DVDs to store the navigation info etc.
And now to something completely different ... Check this one out, it is funny as hell.
I finished the basic dvdauthor import filter neccesary to help with simple projects. I did also change the export filter to allow now to create a dvd without menus. This way you can use the dvdauthor-XML file created by kino and import it to 'Q' DVD-Author, press on the Create button and get one boring kind of a DVD, or you can import the file and add your own menus now in 'Q' DVD-Author.
I also started with finished a new import filter for Kino's smil output. This filter will only implement the most basic subset of the smil 2.0 language definition. Please note here that this makes only sense if we get the transcoding interface in 'Q' DVD-Author to convert the files from DV to mpeg2 format.
I furthermore started working on the subtitles interface and have split this functionality and GUI elements out into a new source file.
Finally I fixed some issues with the chapter selection and I fixed the ratio settings in the dvdauthor XML file.
As you can read the progress sounds pretty boring and is only exciting in the overall picture of the progress. A little progress here, a new feature there make a great application after some time.
Oh, did I forget to mention Haloween also came to town
I had the pleasure of talking to the people from The Linux Link Show again yesterday and it was a great show. We chatted about the changes since the last time I went on and I came to the realization that 'Q' DVD-Author has grown tremendously since February 16'th, the last time I was on the air.
During the show I was asked how to tell which version is running and since there was no way to tell, I implemented this right after the show. So from now on you will see the Version number and the build date of the program in the AboutDialog.
Another point on the show was that I will release the very first beta version of 'Q' DVD-Author within a months time frame. Once we switch to beta, I will start using the Bugzilla system to track issues. I know that the program has tons of bugs and crashes a lot but I hope that once I declare it beta I will get some more traction, feedback and patches.
I want to end this entry by mentioning Rolf W. for the bug reports AND the time and energy he invested in trying to find people to help out with 'Q' DVD-Author. There are a lot of things that can be done by non programmers to help out.
I reached yet another milestone. My internal backup counter hit 300. That makes me wonder what QDVDAuthor will look like when I hit 600.
I fixed some small bugs in the XML file generation and got about 95% of the dvdauthor import filter working.
Once I finished the import, I am going to implement some basic functionality into the subtitle part and will then be able to release the very first beta version.
Success
I completed the new implementation of the xml file generator. I believe that the new version is much better and will create a DVD conforming structure. Of course I am also sure that I will find another few bugs before it works perfectly but ... Give it a shot.
I got a lot of feedback from people with stand alone player lately and they should find the new version much better.
Following through on my TODO list I see the import filter luring all the way on the top. This is where I will invest a few brain cells over the next couple of days.
I want to close this entry with something that has been in my mind for a long time ( I last hearrrred id in Doublin ! ): S'lohng and wherrrr ihs mai Guiness ?
I have been busy re-writing the dvdauthor export functionality to fix the issue with stand alone player. Unfortunately I am still working on it and unless I get at least a basic DVD to work I will hold off with any release.
Since I am on it I also started an import filter for dvdauthor XML files. This will be a simple import filter which takes dvdauthor's XML and then all related spumux XML files and tries to display the result for further modifications through QDVDAuthor.
I want to at least be able to read Kino's generated dvdauthor's project file's and (of course) QDVDAuthors generated output files. I hope I can synch up with Dan Dennedy (Kino) to help me make this happen.
| On other news : |
Gregor M. sent me a patch which fixes an issue with the loading of project files. Thx. Rolf W. activated some people from Hamburg (Germany) which want to help me finding Bugs and create some documentation for QDVDAuthor. |
... and to end with my son's words : "that's it"
I started reworking the xml file creation and run into a couple of issues right off the bat. I found that the mask generation is only working if you don't have any text-buttons. Well, I had, I found and I fixed those bugs. I am quite confident that I have the 4 color mapping now correctly implemented.
Before I forget to mention it, I had the hardest time getting theGimp to do what I needed. So I found the coolest paint program around (for my purposes).
mtPaint. Thanx to Mark Tylor's extensive palette handling options in mtPaint, I could pinpoint and extinguish the bugs much faster then I could have otherwise.
Going forward I will make the dvdauthor.xml more dynamic (using the DVD virtual machine register etc.). I hope to be able to fix the issues with some stand-alone DVD players which do not like the current structure.
I have been busy playing with 'Q'DVD-Author the past few days and have created a new concept GUI (not yet working at all) for the subtitle generation. I thought if I ever want to get away from the alpha stage, then I should work on the missing pieces NOW.
 | I included also context menus in the StructureToolBar. You can now access those menus from there as well as from the DVDMenu. This was something I always pushed out and now I have finally invested those two days of work. Also, if you click on the image, you can see that the color key'ing is working quite nicely. Check out the Sun.
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And lastly I put dvd-slideshow now under the bin directory (of QDVDAuthor) I will have to find a good solution to ship my own version of dvd-slideshow.
Okay I could finally spend some time on 'Q' DVD-Author again and fixed the slideshow generation and integration into QDVDAuthor. If you had problems before you will find it to be working fairly nice by now. I had to make a very small change to dvd-slideshow (V 0.7.1) and will now ship this script with QDVDAuthor.
Also very important to the development was the fact that I could finally figure out why I gdb was unusable. After disabling the optimization for the compiler I can now debug again, which should speed up the bug hunt a lot.
I am now trying to figure out the best way to offer template download and installation from the web. Also I want to finish at least one more animated template and offer the backgrounds I received from Jean Cartier.
Okay, got to get back now before I fall asleep. again.
I have spent little time on 'Q' DVD-Author as there are so many things currently going on. What I have focused on was the integration of the color keying, which is working quit nicely now. Simply select one or multiple colors and a delta to be filetered out of the image/movie - object.
I have also implemented attributes for each object to allow for a delayed appearance in the DVDMneu. E.g. The movie will start showing up on frame Nr 150 and stop shoing on frame Nr 300.
I want to focus the next few days on some improvements on the slideshow part. I have not touched this part for months (or years) now and it does need some attention desperately.
Breakthrough ...
I could link 'Q' DVD-AUthor to the VLC libraries. This was something I started back at the end of 2004 but gave up after getting frustrated with the unusefull vlc-cinfug. I played around this weekend and could link to the static library. Now I only need to find a way to obtain all required information for a correct compile from any system rather then hardcoding it.
Well in other words, I have gotten myself some more work :) and speaking of work ...
Here a little bit about the near future of QDVDAuthor:
Here are some ideas for templates I had.
I also put up a page that describes a little bit the process on how to generate your own templates. You can find it Here.
And last but not least a BIG thank you to the folks who donated some money to my 'not so little anymore' pet project.
PING, I am still around and working on 'Q'DVD-Author.
'Q'DVD-Author is currently getting the ability to use color keying in order to overlay images/movies on top of each other. I need this to have some fireworks showing up on the Wedding Template that I am still working on.
Next thing needed is a way to delay the display of a image/movie. This will allow me to use one fireworks animation and display is at different locations at different times (and with different sizes and colors).
A special thanks goes to F.J. Cruz for sending the latest version of the Spanish translation files.
I wrapped up the changes to the TemplateDialog and found it to be much more usable now that you can drag'N drop files already loaded in 'Q'DVD-Author.
I also store now the language settings in the ini file so you won't have to set it every time you're using QDVDAuthor. And speaking of languages, Philippe Morin send me three french translation files, one for QDVDAuthor, one for QPlayer, and one for QSlideshow. Mercie bien pour l'aide.
I am now working to get some fireworks working using Blender. I need this animation as a partial background for the Wedding template.
Any one interested in helping me to create some more templates please let me know. It is a task where you don't need to program but use only your artistic side.
I have not spent too much time on 'Q' DVD-Author but I spend quite some time playing with coLinux. I installed it on 4 machines (all WinXP) and am amazed how good it works. I combine this with X/Deep32 and have a fully functional network running on my one box.
The other nice thing about it is that you can have multiple versions of Linux for testing etc. (Debian, Gentoo, FedoraCore). While trying to compile 'Q' DVD-Author on those boxes I had to fight with quite some issues, so I start to feel YOUR pain ;)
I also hooked my Digital camcorder up and used kino to get the DV. I wanted to generate a simple DVD and found out that the user interface could use some small changes to make it more usable.
I am thinking about implementing a detection scheme to automate transcoding and top it off with a nice color indicator. I also want to have the TemplateDialog accept videos from the SourceToolbar. It is the simple things that are missing ...
| I just released version Alpha 0.0.10 . . . |  |
It has been nearly five months since the last release. And I finally decided to release yet another alpha version. I named this release Crashing Thunder because it has a ton of cool new UNTESTED features.
I was not able to get two features in I need in order to switch to beta. Namely subtitles, and a rework of the xml creation algorithm.
As with the previous version, there are simply too many changes to list them all here. The CHANGELOG file will detail exactly what has changed. Here are the highlights.
One note: For animated Buttons, animated menus or animated objects you need to have mplayer and mencoder installed. I hope to implement a xine based solution at some later point in time.
Future outlook:
There are two major items left to be done before the first beta.
Unfortunately the list of things to be done has reached huge proportions (over 150 open points) and my spare time has vanished into thin air. I would appreciate any type of help like coding, translations, testing, ideas, etc.
 | A big thank you to the two donors who contributed recently to this project. It defenitely helps me convince my wife that I HAVE TO do those changes at midnight ;) |
I wrapped up the MovieLine template and implemented the MediaPreview in the TemplateWizard. I also had some time to fix a few bugs. I will now get a basic Progress bar in place which shows the utilized space on the DVD.
My next template will be a wedding template, which I promissed my brother in law for his upcoming wedding.
I intend to get the next release out soon, though I know there are tons of untested areas. I think this is better then to hold off (as I did so far). This way we will hopefully get some feedback.
I generated my first animated menu and am now working in putting a real template together. This is fun but takes time away from programming.
I am currently working on a template which uses a movie-line type background and I was amazed that I could not generate this easily with any graphical tool. What I wanted was a simple way, to script an image but to no avail. Now here is an idea for another project. A command line tool that takes an input file (xml) and handles actions such as drawing a rectangle, resizing, cropping etc.
1 minute 6 DropZones |  |
I looked into theGimp's ScriptFu but this is not realy a command line tool, nor do I consider it easy. I got so desperate that I wanted to write a mini Qt app, to do this but came to my senses and did it through a small image and a few lines of html. I then took a screenshot and cut it to the right size manually. The question remains : WHY do I have to jump through such hoops and loops to get to where I want ?
Any volunteer to get working on a command line based image manipulation tool (and no I am not thinking in the lines of ImageMagic's convert etc.)
I wrote all the code pieces neccesary for the animated menus, implemented the AnimationDialog and am now getting ready to generate my first Animated Menu. I have not been able to follow through with it yet because of some missing parts in the TemplateDialog.
Ding dong, I finished up the TemplateDialog and can now get my hands on the guts of the animated templates. Once I completed this I will strive towards the next release.
The list of things to be done is still a mile long but I have to take it a step at a time. If I would get feedback or patches I could focus more on the internal structures. Maybe a new release will bring some helping hands on board.
I started implementing the logic for the dynamic templates (I.e. where you can move things around). I assume that with my tight schedule I will need another week or two to have it working.
You can check out the AnimationDialog and give me some feedback on it. I thought the best an easiest way is to have a scripting language to produce the coordinates. Then I thought about what it would take to implement a parsers and figured why invent the wheel over and over again if you can use just about any scripting language which writes to stdout.
I implemented the template dialog to about 95%. And generated two simple templates, which seem to work just fine. I will put up a page which describes how to install those templates and then move on programming on some simple dynamic templates.
If you look closely at the basic6-template you can see the new cool transparency effect for text :).
I also want to put a GUI together to generate Subtitles so we can go Beta. I don't think I will have the time to do much coding on it though.
Tata for now and stay tuned.
I implemented transparrency for text objects, which looks pretty cool. I also started with a new dialog to handle templates.
With the TemplateDialog, I want to have a very easy to use interface to allow the user to create good looking menus with some WHIFF and yes I am also planing in providing animated menus.
The good: The internal structures are flexible enough to implement animated menus.
The bad: I am so short on time that I have a maximum of one hour per day to get some work done.
I will update CVS tonight and hopefully get some work done as well.
After a long break and some family add-ons I finally implemented all the functionality required for transcoding. As I am running short on time I would like to ask YOU for some help.
Basically I have a few options you can choose in the MovieDialog under the Transcode tab. These are then processed and displayed in the CommandQueueDialog. I implemented the transcode util version but I am looking to get some feedback on it.
Also I prepared for a conversion using MPlayer and MEncoder but would need some one who can help me with the conversion of the options.
Last but not least I am open to other possible command line tools (like tovid etc.) Let me know if you want to help me out so I can include it with QDVDAuthor.
I updated CVS and the nightly build for your pleasure, but remember that I have changed a lot and thus expect some crashes.
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Ian Yuan-Wen Okan Born 05/06/05 9:28am  |
This is the latest addition to our young family. I hope you understand why 'Q' DVD-Author's development has slowed lately.
May 2nd 2004
I stole some time from my weekend to work on the Transcoding interface. I implemented the easy part, to store and retrieve the information and I came up with a scheme on how to implement the conversion step into the final project.
Now that I have a plan and a drawing I should be able to follow through with programming faster.
Also I had some thoughts about the overall user handling and hope that one day I will find the time to get working on the themes. I have a fully imerse OpenGL driven 3D theme in mind and have already come up with some ideas for the themes itself.
One other cool feature would be to offer a simple disk-at-once, where the user only puts the sources together and 'Q' DVD-Author generates the menu structure, backgrounds etc.
It seems like live is getting in the way as I have not been able to spend a minute on 'Q' DVD-Author since late March.
I hope I can get a breather some day and continue working on transcoding interface. I will let you know when I have new features available.
After I started on a new dialog for the menu properties I found that it is very similar to DialogChapters, which is very similar to DialogMovieObject. So I decided to put those three dialogs into one common dialog called DialogMovie.
I am now in the process of implementing the functionality for this dialog. Though it is basically cut'n paste I ran into some problems with the adjustment of the MovieLine length of this dialog.
I also fixed an issue when jumping to chapter 1 from VMGM.
Next on my list is to include a simple transcode interface into the same dialog. and then the implementation and testing of said functionality.
Okay enough for now, got to get back to work ...
'Q' DVD-Author in the news:
Marko K. sent me a note that 'Q' DVD-Author is featured in the current international edition of the Linux Magazine and he sent me a link to the actual article. Though the article is very positive, it is using version 0.0.8, which by now is pretty much outdated.
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I tried to get one hardcopy but was so far unsuccesful to locate a April issue :( Which brings me to the point, that it is really hard to get a linux magazine of any flavour in just any store, you have to go to a bookstore like Barns&Nobles or Borders. Why do you get a whole range of Linux magazines in any shop in europe (including CD or DVD) and you can't find any here in the states ? Is there simply no broad enough interest for Linux ? |
Anyhow, here are some links to some magazines available in the states.
Oh and I have included all new options which were discussed below into the SetupDialog but now I need to implement their functionality.
I implemented a New Project Wizard so the whole process is easier for the end user to get started.
I also implemented a dialog to help handle the temp drive and all the data from all the projects. This is to help the user keep the harddrive free.
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Next I will focus on the SetupDialog and put in an option to have 'Q' DVD-Author automatically remove any temp data older than a specified date. This way the whole process is kept easily manageable. The user does not have to go and remove the files ever so often. Also on the list is to provide an option to select an external video player and an option to restrict the number of the maximum background threads.
So everything is tacking along quit nicely but there is still a lot to be done for the next release, so stay tuned ...
 | Ooops I found out that I did not implement the KXineWidget object in the MediaCreator. Instead I had the standard QXineWidget created. So you ask yourself what all this gebabble means to you ... Well, basically 'Q' DVD-Author made you believe you would be using the latest Kaffeine-widget, when in reality you were not. |
So this was fixed and to my surprise, this widget is not as crash happy as QXineWidget.
I also wrapped up my work on the ChapterDialog, and the MovieObjectDialog. Those dialogs should now be much more useable than before. Please note: due to the problem with xine to detect the propper length of a Video, you might want to choose the MPlayerWidget for these two dialogs (Tools->Setup).
I added a MovieLine to the MovieObjectDialog and the ChapterDialog. I believe you will like this feature a lot. CVS currently only holds the mplayer implementation but I am working to make the xine version work too.
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A big thank you to Phil Oleson for his patches for FreeBSD.
| With all the job searching currently going on, I completely forgot to thank the people who most recently donated to this project (and thus to my sons education). |
I just found the article about QDVDAuthor from LinuxUser 11/2004 online and added it to the guides. Sorry, german only but you can translate it using Babelfish. Here is the english translation and here is the french translation.
Please note that this tutorial was written using version 0.0.8a and is thus a little bit outdated by now.
If you know of any other guide in any language please drop me a line, so I can add it to the list.
I finished assembling the wanna have - list for the next release. According to this list you can expect to have a basic transcoding GUI working, have a project wizzard help with the basic setup, get some more Undo/Redo working and Cut'n Paste in it as well.
Of course fixing bugs and improving on the other new functions is high on the list as well, but I would not even need to mention this here, now would I ?
For now I will focus on slightly smaller things, like the ChapterDialog and give the application some StyLE (under Tools->Style that is).
I already implemented the style selection and am now working on a Start-Stop slider to allow you to crop a video.
| I just released version Alpha 0.0.9 . . . |  |
It has been over three months in the making and I did not leave one class untouched. The code base has grown from just over 40000 to around 57000 Lines of code with an additional 71 files in CVS and still no end in sight.
There have been too many changes to list all of them here. For the nitty gritty details check out the CHANGELOG. Here is the list with the most significant changes since version 0.0.8.
On other news, dvdauthor version 0.6.11 has been relesed two days ago. Version 0.6.10 has some problems with ImageMagick.
Future outlook:
There are two major items left to be done before the first beta. The first is a way to transcode any source material to a propper mpeg2 stream and the second beeing the implementation of the subtitles - tab.
I am now at a point where I have to rethink the xml generation. The current routine is to static and needs a bit of work to allow e.g. the grouping of menus into one titleset etc.
Also important is to continue on the unfinished work, like undo/redo functionality, the implementation of cut/copy and paste, etc.
| A big thank you to all who donated some money. I hope that you will find the new features in 'Q' DVD-Author helpfull. |
Exciting news : Trolltech has just anounced that Qt 4.0 for Windows will be released under the GPL.
This is grrrrreat, now we can port 'Q' DVD-Auhtor to Windows. Any volunteers ?
The folks from The Linux Link Show want to get me on to chat about 'Q' DVD-Author. This should be nice and every one is welcome to tune in with this link Wednesday Feb 16'th 2005.. You can test it anytime as they are streaming archived shows all the time.
Of course if you have skype you can also provide some feedback.
I added a dialog to set the length of a menu and /dev/null'ed a lot of bugs and other anomalies.
I was also able to fix a compilation bug for SuSE 9.0 and can now continue with those nasty critters. Speaking of which, I have another 7 on my list and an overhaul of the XML - file creation before I am ready to release the next and hopefully last Alpha version.
So stay tuned as the next version is just around the corner.
Time flies when you are having fun.
I used every spare minute trying to get the next release out. There is only one more point left of the list before I start the bug-fixing list. I can tell you that this list is unfortunately pretty long itself :(
Anyhow I implemented two new dialogs. The first will display the progress while a MovieMenu is rendered. The second will allow you to modify the MovieObject's properties.
I updated CVS so you can check out the new features if you want.
All wright I got SuSE 9.2 installed and spent about two days trying to get the Wireless working. After all was done I still had to update and install a few other things before I could finally compile 'Q' DVD-Author. After the next reboot I found that my whole system was messed up and I had to do another day of fruitless investigation before I re-sinstalled 9.2 from scratch :(
So rather then beeing productive I was busy getting the system up and running. But I finally got it to work ... PHEW. Here are some stats :
When I was compiling on a 500MHz Laptop it took around 40 minutes for a full compile. On my dual PIII 733MHz box a full compile with -j2 still took around 16 minutes.
On my new AMD64 1.8GHz (3000+) I was pleasantly surprised to have it compile in less then 5 minutes (4mn 59 sec). Now if I am not mistaken this would put the AMD at around 4GHz if compared against a PIII.
Oh and by the way, I finally implemented the Render algorithm and yesterday I rendered my very first MovieMenu. I will do some cleaning up before updating CVS later tonight.
As excited as I am about this feature I have to warn you that there is a lot to be done to make this a usefull feature. For once I still need to implement all neccesary dialogs and then I also want to write a command line tool to do the rendering, to enable us to export a script and have the full authoring process covered.
My birthday present arrived today and so I was playing around with it most of the time.
Since I did not maintain my old Window$ 95 environment I could never play URU, which I had since christmas of 2003. Finally I can play it under WinXP. Funny though I always thought I will one day be able to play it under wine.
I am in the process of downloading SuSE 9.2, 64 bit edition to install on my Laptop, so I can use this as my primary development box and get the compilation time down to less then 10 minutes.
The past few days I was working hard on 'Q' DVD-Author and even though there is hardly any progress on display believe me when I tell you that it is coming along slowly but steady.
I implemented the routines to extract all neccesary frames to render a MovieMenu with (or without) MovieObjects (buttons that is). I have now a clear vision of the directory layout and the full process on how to render the menus. Now I need to find the time to implement all of this.
On started a new application called QRender which will later handle the rendering as a command line tool so we can export the script and run it manually. Currently I will focus in implementing the RenderEngine internally and have done some special handling in the CommandQueue and CommandExecute dialogs.
Remember I told you that I had a few points to consider ... Well I considered and considered and ... (you get the idea). I can tell you that 2:00am is not the time to design background threads and IPCs when you have a one year old. This is in stark contrast to the time when I was a student. Then 2:00am was THE time to think.
But I got some code done and am now working on the juicy parts. I decided to implement a very basic scheme for now to get us started and then improve on it later on.
CVS: I will hold off updating CVS until I have generated my first Movie - background, as I see no reason to give you something that does not work. So please be patient on this one.
Tata for now, got to cut the cake. :
So then lets see what has changed since my last update ...
Also after about 2 hours of crash investigation (QThread and xine-lib do not like each other) I installed Xine 1.0 and now everything is working like a dream come true. I urge every one using the xine libs to do the same, prefferably compiling xine-libs from source.
Tata for now as I have to do some groceries ...
Varol ;)
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