Record and Reverie » Frontrow http://www.cod3r.com General things I find interesting Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:44:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3 Common Media Player Framework http://www.cod3r.com/2010/02/common-media-player-framework/ http://www.cod3r.com/2010/02/common-media-player-framework/#comments Sat, 27 Feb 2010 19:27:43 +0000 Graham Booker http://www.cod3r.com/?p=292 About 3 weeks ago, Kevin (developer of NitoTV) and I decided it was a bit silly how we were each writing playback mechanisms on the AppleTV with little to no collaboration between us. So, we decided to write a Common Media Player Framework, which is licensed using LGPL.

Kevin sent me the code he used for DVD playback inside NitoTV as a place to start. I stripped it down to a smaller piece, and started the framework. After I had it doing basic playback, I worked on overlays to provide feedback to the user. Now, hitting up and down changes the overlays between normal, chapter view, audio/subtitle selection, and zoom.

Chapter Overlay Sceenshot

Also, I added a pretty menu using a blurred image as the resume menu. This is more consistent with Apple’s own playback

Resume Overlay

In addition, I used my work on AC3 Passthrough in Perian to see if I could pull off the same in DVD Playback. The issue is the AppleTV claims to only have a device which can play uncompressed audio, not one that can send Dolby Digital to a decoder. So, I created an audio driver that claims to do exactly that and pipe the data through to the optical/HDMI port. It was a lot of fun getting that working, and then I added support for DTS.

Anyway, now Sapphire uses the common media player framework for DVD playback. In the future, we’ll add other playback mechanisms as well.

]]> http://www.cod3r.com/2010/02/common-media-player-framework/feed/ 0 Sapphire Plugin http://www.cod3r.com/2007/12/sapphire-plugin/ http://www.cod3r.com/2007/12/sapphire-plugin/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 05:34:18 +0000 Graham Booker http://www.cod3r.com/2007/12/sapphire-plugin/ Well, it’s official. Sapphire, one of the best AppleTV plugins, has released beta 4. This is a major upgrade from beta 3, adding support for movies and improvements overall. One of the most interesting features is that this version also works as a frontrow plugin in Leopard. As far as I have been able to find out, this is the first plugin to do this, which means it could open up a whole new world for frontrow. Previously, it was limited to those with an AppleTV, but now, anyone with a mac can use it. The only question is how many would find it useful?

I have been thoroughly enjoying this baby on my AppleTV. Can’t wait to see what comes down the road.

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