[MPlayer-dev-eng] Question about MPlayer enhancement - maybe already done?

[Nick (Gunnar) Bluth]

Hi!

Pro Open GmbH will - hopefully ;-) - soon deliver an installation of it's 
"Advert Casting Solution" Pro AdCast to a fair in Germany. For information 
about Pro AdCast refer to 
http://www.pro-open.de/uploads/media/dI_040811-Produktbeschreibung_Pro_AdCast_2.0.pdf
(sorry, german only atm.).
Basically, it's a solution to present all kind of visual content in a 
predictable, accountable order in a distributed environment.
It uses mplayer for all "moving" content (what else ;-).

The current capabilities (delivering "static" content like trailers, video 
jingles and longer "InfoTainment" snipplets) are "good enough" for the 
initial deployment, but the people there would like to do something like a 
"Fair TV", and deliver the content "enriched" with stuff like a wheather 
forecast, a newsticker, and different logos for the different halls.

We've been looking at the menu and subtitle stuff, learning that adding 
transparent layers, even with dynamic content (like scrolling fonts etc.) is 
basically already possible. 
But none of us has here the abilities nor the time to get deeper into the code 
and find out how it could be adapted to give e.g. a running mplayer(d) some 
"CNN" or "NTV"-like look.
We have contact to some good hackers in Indonesia who would probably be able 
to implement this for us, but we would prefer that someone from the mplayer 
core team would be interested in doing the job, or at least to assist and 
earn some money/serious donations with "consulting" ;-)

That's why I'm initiating a contact here ;-)

Thoughts up to now:
- should be running in Linux i386 Framebuffer mode
- possible approaches (from our point of view, any input welcome ;-):
    - add dynamic (Logo, wheather forecast etc.) stuff as a menu(-like) layer
    - add ability to multiplex static (aka. on local disk) video content with 
a stream containing the dynamic stuff on the fly at playtime.
    - add a special output device that adds the dynamic contents to the static 
ones
- is it possible to add input filters for images (PNG, JPEG, ...), since Pro 
AdCast offers these formats?
- generation of dynamic stuff possible "on the fly" (glueing Logo image, some 
frame/icon images and (scrolling) text together on the client)  possible?
- GUI for creation of "frames" -> will probably be done by Pro Open
- how long would it take to implement this?
- has it maybe even been already done and we just didn't find it?

If possible, we'd prefer a solution that could run "standalone" and combine 
the content "in place", since Pro AdCast is designed to work "offline" and on 
low bandwidth connections (why stream a 10k logo 25 times a second, ...).

BTW: 
We are (of course!) going to release the additional stuff as GPL, equally who 
does it. We're no "freaks" (German "LIVE" member), but clearly commit to free 
software.
Maybe you've already met/seen some of us, we had a screen at the LIVE booth at 
the Linuxtag this year (at least we've seen you ;-).

We'd really appreciate to hear from you soon!

Cheers,
-- 
Nick (Gunnar) Bluth
Technical director Pro Open GmbH
RHCE/RHCX
gunnar.bluth at pro-open.de
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