MediaPlayer
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Launchpad Entry: Mobile-MediaPlayer
Packages affected:
Summary
The media viewer application for mobile devices. This is not the spec for the underlying engine (e.g. gstreamer, helix, etc). The media player for UME will have a finger-navigable UI capable of viewing photos, playing music and videos, and using either the gstreamer or helix media engines with a common interface to them. The UI will follow the recommendations in the [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MobileAndEmbedded/UIStyleGuide UI Style Guide]
Screenshots at the bottom
Rationale
There are some existing media applications but none seem to cover all of the features needed and be tailored for a MID, so a new UI is being written. The goal is to simplify the media management on the MID and provide a single place for viewing and listening to media.
Gstreamer and Helix media engines will be supported with dynamic discovery of the content types supported by whichever engine is present at runtime. Helix support is being included primarily for DRM solutions.
Use Cases
Scope
The entire scope of media management is large, from the first time a user obtains some content to consuming it on the device. The following section describes the full spectrum with the ones outside the scope of this application shown in red. Additional functionality may be added as time and resources permit.
Functional Specification
PC = non-mobile device, such as a Linux or Windows desktopBR MID = Mobile Internet Device.BR Content = music files (mp3, etc), movies (.mpg, etc), photos (.jpg, etc)BR Media viewer = Multimedia application on MIDBR
1. Content Management on the PC
(Currently not planned) There are a few choices for music management on the PC (e.g. Windows Media Player, ITunes, Banshee). For movie and photo management, users often use the filesystem directly. Eventually a new "MID Content Manager" application could be written.
2. Getting content to the device
- 2.1 Syncing
* Auto-sync with an application that manages content on the PC. This involves writing a new plugin or application that pushes the content from one of the following applications to the MID when the MID is plugged in via USB.
* Only sync down (all content is pushed to MID. Any MID content changes are lost
* Sync in both directions: content is merged on PC and MID. Conflicts are resolved by asking user for preference.
* Auto-sync with a file directory on the PC (just file system). Application registered when MID is plugged in to USB to auto-sync contents.
- Manual-sync: Plug MID into USB port. MID file system exposed to PC. User drags/drops files from PC to the MID file system.
* Auto-detect other MIDs in area via bluetooth. Connect. Display shared content from each MID on other MID. User can download content to their MID.
- Receive email with content. Save content to MID filesystem.
- On MID, download content from internet via the browser
- On MID, download/upload content from wired or wireless connection to remote filesystem over network
3. Content Management on MID
- User can:
- View content name, artist, album, length, genre, music format, times played, last played date/time
- View content as list
- View content as thumbnails (album art for music, cover-art for movies or frame from movie, small image for photos)
- View content as resizable thumbnails
- View 3D-flipping album art
- Select content
- Select multiple files at the same time
- Organize content folders, create new folders, name folders, move content between folders
* Assign content metadata: Name, Artist, Album, genre, cover art
* Auto-lookup music metadata online from CDDC: Name, artist, album, cover art
- Create, delete, edit playlists
- Sort music by: Name, Date, length, Artist, Album, genre, type (mp3, wav, etc)
Slideshow
- Create a slideshow of photos
- Assign a music file to play when slideshow is started
- Assign a music playlist to play when slideshow is started
- Set the time delay between photo transitions
- Set transition effect between pictures (fade, slide, etc)
4. Content Playback on MID
- User can:
- Play content
- Pause content
- Play content at double speed forward and backward
- Play content at variable speed forward and backward
- Jump to beginning of content
- Jump to end of content
- Stop content
- View progress of content playback
- View time content has been playing
- Jump to location within the content by moving the progress thumb to a new location
Video
- Play full screen video
- Pause and restart full screen video without leaving full screen Audio
- Show visualizations while playing audio
- Show visualizations full screen while playing audio
- Start audio and play it in the background while performing other tasks
- Easily pause audio that is playing in the background
Photo
- Show photos full screen.
- Navigate to next and previous photos
- Play slideshow
- Pause full screen slideshow and restart without leaving full screen
5. Internet Radio
- User can:
- Create, edit, and delete internet radio stations
- Select a station and listen to streaming audio
- Add a new internet radio station from inside the browser.
6. Content Plugins
- Media viewer will support mechanism for applications to register for certain content types and show buttons to launch these applications when the content of the registered type is selected. Plugin applications will be started with the paths to all the content as command-line parameters. Examples include internet upload, email, or any application to manipulate content.
7. Theme / Skin
- Media viewer will use the system theme for all standard Hildon and GTK controls such as buttons, scrollbars, and dialogs.
- User can change the skin of the MID media viewer
8. Media Engine
- Media viewer will be capable of using gstreamer or helix media playback engines
- User can select which media engine to use first, or exclusively
- Media viewer will dynamically discover what content types each media engine supports and attempt to playback content on the correct engine
- Media viewer will show a symbol on content that is not supported by any media engines
Design
Media Player is a D-Bus based multimedia player with media viewer and media engines. The D-Bus based Media viewer works as a client, and media engines work as servers. They interact by D-Bus interface for interprocess communication. Every media engine should provide a D-Bus object. Media viewer can call the members defined in D-Bus object, such as methods and signals.
Inside media viewer, there are engine management and music management. Engine management check and get all the engines in current system, get the capablities of engines, choose the right engine for a specific media content to be played. Music management can manage all the audio content in current system and show the audio content to users in playlist or album mode. Music management allow user to add/delete/rename the playlist, repeat/shuffle play content inside a playlist, and search/sort inside a playlist.
Implementation
The GUI is drawn by Glade Interface Designer. The media viewer and gstreamer D-Bus engine are written in python, so many python binding libraries are used in media player project, such as gtk, dbus, pygst, gobject, optparse, etc. A serial uniform of D-Bus interface has been defined, and all the media engines should follow this definition for their D-Bus interface.
Screenshots
attachment:MoblinMediaPictureViewer.png attachment:MoblinMediaPictureThumbnails.png attachment:MoblinMediaMusicPlayer.png attachment:MoblinMediaVideoPlayer.png
Outstanding Issues