ReactOS Media Player

[andrewweb]

I'm double posting because there was no response.

andrewweb: Please give specifics if you want to use my design. What components, what formats, what sizes, etc? And the buttons, can they be png to support transparency, or if bmp, what background color?

Hi artguyt, sorry I didn't hear you sooner. The specifics are this:
The menus can be anything but:
The buttons are play, pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, back, forward and eject. Your current design is great, so I will use it, OK?

[andrewweb]

You still need a media control as that is required in many apps.

WHAT? That uses a media control. Just it is set with the play button hidden.(I added my own play button)

[artguy10]

The specifics are this:
The menus can be anything but:
The buttons are play, pause, stop, rewind, fast forward, back, forward and eject. Your current design is great, so I will use it, OK?

Sure, you can use it, though I would like the "about" window to say something like 'Design by Ariel Lepor' or something.

I'm still not 100% clear on all the exact files you need.

For one thing, please let me know about the size (pixels) of the buttons/window.

Could PNG be okay, and if not (if I must use BMP), what background color? Buttons for mouse overs and click, as well?

And again, what about the window, do you want the window design? Should I include the menus names up there?

Should I include the play button inside the black window (with mouse-over and click brightness changes)? What about an equivalent play button (only in png) for mouse-over the window during playback (if you can have it fade in and out, only, though)?

What about the about window or options window design?

So you see, I'm still not sure exactly what you need just from the list of buttons, so please answer my other questions.

By the way, about features, I have some suggestions.
It should have support of more formats.
It should be resizable (window size).
The video playback area should only appear when a video file is open, and it should fit to the video's dimensions.
What about volume control?
What about the program's icon (would you like me to format that play button into ico format?)?

[andrewweb]

Sure, you can use it, though I would like the "about" window to say something like 'Design by Ariel Lepor' or something.

Okay, I will have that in the about windows

I'm still not 100% clear on all the exact files you need.
For one thing, please let me know about the size (pixels) of the buttons/window.

I would like the same sizes as used in the mock up.
The exact files are:
windows corners (BMP)
windows borders between corners (BMP)
background (BMP)
Control button files (over, down(click) and normal) (JPG)
Volume slider files(BMP or JPG)
Progress slider colour (I can't use images for this)
Window buttons files (all states, minimize, maximize, close)
Play area image (JPG please)
Icon for program (JPG and ICO please)
menu bar and menu name images (JPG for bar, names in BMP please)

Could PNG be okay, and if not (if I must use BMP), what background color? Buttons for mouse overs and click, as well?

Sorry, can't use PNG. JPG and BMP are fine however.(please use the particular types mentioned above)
I need Buttons for mouse over, mouse down(click) and normal.

And again, what about the window, do you want the window design? Should I include the menus names up there?

I mentioned above I wanted window design. Yes, I do.
I would like menu names please.

Should I include the play button inside the black window (with mouse-over and click brightness changes)? What about an equivalent play button (only in png) for mouse-over the window during playback (if you can have it fade in and out, only, though)?

OK, I won't need mouse overs or mouse downs for that. I shall simply make it fade in or out (no clicking).

What about the about window or options window design?

I will use the same window design as for main window (I will stretch to different size).

So you see, I'm still not sure exactly what you need just from the list of buttons, so please answer my other questions.

By the way, about features, I have some suggestions.
It should have support of more formats.
It should be resizable (window size).
The video playback area should only appear when a video file is open, and it should fit to the video's dimensions.
What about volume control?
What about the program's icon (would you like me to format that play button into ico format?)?

It will be resizable. It ONLY supports formats with their codecs loaded, so a file that plays in windows media player will play in this.

I hope I have anwsered your questions.
Thanks for the design.

[artguy10]

Okay, I can start working on it now. Just a little more clarification. (Sorry for all the questions, but if you need specific files to work with, I have to know exactly what you need.)

On the menu-bar, you want the bmp file to contain the actual words for the menus? These will be clickable, so do I instead need to make individual bmp files for the words, and do I need to make their clicked counterparts?

And window boarders/corners. Is that like 5px by 5px per corner and edge or what? Could they be any size I want? Must they not overlap with the other parts of the window (like control buttons)? Should the top corners/edge contain the boarders between the titlebar, menubar, and actual window?

And should I include any text or icon (the one in my example) in the title bar? What about clicked-versions of the close/minimize/maximize buttons? How should these close/minimize/maximize buttons be formatted?

For the icon, I can make the ico file for the icon in my example. Is this the one you want? What size for the jpg icon file?

Any text to illustrate the time in the movie elapsed, or will you take care of that?

Do you want a short version (without the movie space, for audio playback), so you can stretch the window and add the space later for only playing video files?

For playback position, perhaps I could make the area thicker to make it more obvious (since you can't use an image). Would it be possible for me to include start, middle, and end images for the position tracker so it looks nicer, or must it just be a solid color?

By the way, how are you going to include video information about time elapsed, movie name, and possible track, author, etc information? Are you going to include the time like in my mock-up (though I wouldn't be making a graphic for this) and the title of the media file in the titlebar of the window?

[artguy10]

Okay.

Even without all the answers to the above questions, here are the files. If anything is wrong/missing/needs-revision, you can let me know. Let me know if everything is good to go, though.

Here is the link to the download page. (You need to have a program which can extract 7z files.)
http://www.mediafire.com/?0sxinyhz4v9

[andrewweb]

Okay.

Even without all the answers to the above questions, here are the files. If anything is wrong/missing/needs-revision, you can let me know. Let me know if everything is good to go, though.

Here is the link to the download page. (You need to have a program which can extract 7z files.)
http://www.mediafire.com/?0sxinyhz4v9

Thanks for the files.
Shall release new media player in a few days.

[artguy10]

Thanks for the files.
Shall release new media player in a few days.

Great! I'm glad all the files are in order. Just make sure that looks aren't the only changes. Info about the movie needs to be displayed, and it shouldn't let you open un-supported video types (such as mov). Hopefully it will eventually contain a list view of tracks or a library of media files?

And by the way, if the big play area isn't click-able, then when a movie is paused, it should show a pause button, not a play button. But if the screen is click-able, a mouse-over should show a transparent pause button (png file) and when paused the screen should show the play button. So, let me know if you need any other files (mouse-over transparent pause button or large black screen with pause button).

[andrewweb]

You still need a media control as that is required in many apps.

WHAT? That uses a media control. Just it is set with the play button hidden.(I added my own play button)

Sorry, yes I know what you mean. I misunderstood.
We do need a media control (developers willing to help?)

I meen like a media player ActiveX or OLE control.

[artguy10]

Okay, it would have been nice to make a new post saying you updated the program. Now I see...

Okay, well, it looks much better, but still there are problems... BIG problems.
Instead of calling this "version 2.0", this is still more like "version 0.2". I hope you will follow my below suggestions (and I mean all of them) before calling it a complete "Version 1.0". Adding some of the more important suggestions might merit version 0.3, all the suggestions might merit a version 0.8, and then bug fixes and beta testing could lead to a version 1.0. Version 2.0 might be after you add even more functionality, such as a media library or the ability to play YouTube videos. It still requires a lot of work before becoming a REAL GOOD program, and I hope you're willing to continue to develop it (don't get discouraged!). (By the way, is this program under the GPL?) (But even before all of this, and before I draw up more stuff for different functions of the program, I want to make sure the developers would include it in ReactOS so I'm not just doing something for nothing.)

-----

So let's get going (and I'm not going to necessarily mention every issue right now, but some things are just obviously needing attention)...

For one thing, it can't play everything it seems to be able to open. It opened an avi file and played it, but it failed to play an mov file it opened.

"Opening CD" even when there is no cd in the computer is unusual. It should be not an option if there is no cd, and even then, cds can be opened through the regular open file menu. Maybe something could come up upon putting in a cd, asking if you want to play it, or maybe an icon in the toolbar allowing to open the cd. (By the way, if I choose the open cd option, at least without a cd, I see the progress timer say something like 5423/0 mins and keep changing.)

The black playing area should not show when the program opens for the first time. It should onlyshow up when a video is open. And it should have a boarder of a few pixels between it and the edges of the program window.

The window needs to be stretchable (which would also stretch the playing area.

There absolutely MUST be a progress bar.

When it plays a video, the video needs to be centered and proportionally stretched to fill the playing video, and maybe the black background should not be there (except during pause).

I designed the buttons so they would be next to each other and in the same order as in my mock-up. The current set-up looks kind of bad. (If you would like me to draw them so they would be ordered differently, let me know.)

The toolbar menus should be as in my mock-up, and features that would be in those menus should be in the program.

Other GUI issues:
There is a white boarder around the upper corners of the program, I guess because it is bmp. It should be transparent, but I could make a square boarder if you want. If it could possibly be png, I could even make a shadow to the window.
The icon in the upper-left of the program has a white boarder which should be a shadow of the icon. (Should I include this in the window section file?)
Clicking a menu doesn't make it change to the clicked view.
Clicking a button doesn't make it change to the clicked view.
The title of the program should be in bold.
IMO, the location of the volume control and clock should be swapped. Also, along with the control buttons, they should be moved a little higher up in the program window.
The clock should only appear when playing something. And it should include hours, minutes, and seconds, as in my mock-up.
The volume control should look nicer with the files I gave you, to fit in with the GUI style. (I also need to make the speaker icon different for various audio levels. If/When you think you can implement it, let me know to make them.)

The above needs to be done before you call this version 0.5.

Other issues/bugs/needed-changes that come to mind (to bring to version 0.8 ) are such like:
when you open a file, before it starts playing, the pause button should be the play button (right now it opens looking like the pause button).
View menu should have options like Full Screen, 100%, 200%, 50%, and Fit to Screen.
Fast forward and rewind should play it at fast speed backwards or forwards, not just jump to a different area.
Play screen should fade (quickly) into movie.
Transparent pause button should (slowly) fade over screen if user moves mouse over it, then slowly fade away along with the mouse.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll likely have more suggestions/bug-notes later. It will be well worth it if you take care of this stuff. Ask me for any files you need for the GUI.

Good luck and keep up the good work! (But remember, this is still version 0.2. )


----

And after all this, we have to think about a mini-player, a web-browser plug-in, and other things to take place of Windows Media Player®.

[andrewweb]

Okay, it would have been nice to make a new post saying you updated the program. Now I see...

Okay, well, it looks much better, but still there are problems... BIG problems.
Instead of calling this "version 2.0", this is still more like "version 0.2". I hope you will follow my below suggestions (and I mean all of them) before calling it a complete "Version 1.0". Adding some of the more important suggestions might merit version 0.3, all the suggestions might merit a version 0.8, and then bug fixes and beta testing could lead to a version 1.0. Version 2.0 might be after you add even more functionality, such as a media library or the ability to play YouTube videos. It still requires a lot of work before becoming a REAL GOOD program, and I hope you're willing to continue to develop it (don't get discouraged!). (By the way, is this program under the GPL?) (But even before all of this, and before I draw up more stuff for different functions of the program, I want to make sure the developers would include it in ReactOS so I'm not just doing something for nothing.)

-----

So let's get going (and I'm not going to necessarily mention every issue right now, but some things are just obviously needing attention)...

For one thing, it can't play everything it seems to be able to open. It opened an avi file and played it, but it failed to play an mov file it opened.

"Opening CD" even when there is no cd in the computer is unusual. It should be not an option if there is no cd, and even then, cds can be opened through the regular open file menu. Maybe something could come up upon putting in a cd, asking if you want to play it, or maybe an icon in the toolbar allowing to open the cd. (By the way, if I choose the open cd option, at least without a cd, I see the progress timer say something like 5423/0 mins and keep changing.)

The black playing area should not show when the program opens for the first time. It should onlyshow up when a video is open. And it should have a boarder of a few pixels between it and the edges of the program window.

The window needs to be stretchable (which would also stretch the playing area.

There absolutely MUST be a progress bar.

When it plays a video, the video needs to be centered and proportionally stretched to fill the playing video, and maybe the black background should not be there (except during pause).

I designed the buttons so they would be next to each other and in the same order as in my mock-up. The current set-up looks kind of bad. (If you would like me to draw them so they would be ordered differently, let me know.)

The toolbar menus should be as in my mock-up, and features that would be in those menus should be in the program.

Other GUI issues:
There is a white boarder around the upper corners of the program, I guess because it is bmp. It should be transparent, but I could make a square boarder if you want. If it could possibly be png, I could even make a shadow to the window.
The icon in the upper-left of the program has a white boarder which should be a shadow of the icon. (Should I include this in the window section file?)
Clicking a menu doesn't make it change to the clicked view.
Clicking a button doesn't make it change to the clicked view.
The title of the program should be in bold.
IMO, the location of the volume control and clock should be swapped. Also, along with the control buttons, they should be moved a little higher up in the program window.
The clock should only appear when playing something. And it should include hours, minutes, and seconds, as in my mock-up.
The volume control should look nicer with the files I gave you, to fit in with the GUI style. (I also need to make the speaker icon different for various audio levels. If/When you think you can implement it, let me know to make them.)

The above needs to be done before you call this version 0.5.

Other issues/bugs/needed-changes that come to mind (to bring to version 0.8 ) are such like:
when you open a file, before it starts playing, the pause button should be the play button (right now it opens looking like the pause button).
View menu should have options like Full Screen, 100%, 200%, 50%, and Fit to Screen.
Fast forward and rewind should play it at fast speed backwards or forwards, not just jump to a different area.
Play screen should fade (quickly) into movie.
Transparent pause button should (slowly) fade over screen if user moves mouse over it, then slowly fade away along with the mouse.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll likely have more suggestions/bug-notes later. It will be well worth it if you take care of this stuff. Ask me for any files you need for the GUI.

Good luck and keep up the good work! (But remember, this is still version 0.2. )


----

And after all this, we have to think about a mini-player, a web-browser plug-in, and other things to take place of Windows Media Player®.

OK, OK, I see these problems.
I AM adding a progress bar(yes I am).
I WILL swap the clock and volume control(sorry, can't use hours, seconds, and minutes).

I should will only show the video area if playing a video. However, I do not agree it should not be open normally.

As for resizing, yes, I will do that. Can't actually make it resizeable, but shall try to add a full-screen feature. It won't have full screen controls (sorry about that).

I can't stretch video(wish I could, shame I can't do that, except in full screen mode).

I shall make the border square myself.

Shall make it version 0.5 now instead.

Oh.. one more thing. I can't do anything about file format support, it depends on installed codecs(well windows media player will open files it doesn't support, and returns an error message). I don't know how to make it detect whether the file is supported, it may trigger an error opening some files, but I can't gaurentee it.

[kevintrooper]

hi, i havent been on this for a long time! WOW nice improvements

i found a bug:


[ external image ]

[artguy10]

Sorry, this is still more like version 0.3, or even version 0.2.5, really. I assure you that it is possible to do all of my suggestions, perhaps you could get help doing that from one of the developers. But if some things, such as stretched videos and a better clock, aren't included, I don't think it would be good enough to include in ROS. I'm sure are open source video players which have these features.

Progress bar is important, so I'm glad its there. Now moving it needs to move the media to that area in the file. (It's good that it tracks where it is, but you need to be able to drag it, too.)

The reason the black area should not show up upon opening is that there is no need for it; if there is no file open, it shouldn't assume that it is a wide-format video. Really, there should be no black area, just a centered-and-stretched video (upon opening one).

A couple more suggestions/bugs (in addition to the unfixed ones mentioned above):
Update the icon in the about screen. At least make the ReactOS logo look nice. I could provide the file if you ask. And put the version number (like Version 0.3) in there.
Moving the mouse over a button doesn't change the button to the mouse-over (darker) file like it should, but it changes the mouse, which it shouldn't. Refer to the mouse in my mock-up.
Pausing a video has the black square play button come up (which covers part of the video but not all), instead of the full screen being black with the play button, or rather the transparent play button coming up.
I don't think it should fade in and out when you open the program. The video themselves or the large play/pause buttons, maybe, but not the whole program. It is often choppy.
Opening a file with the program (through Windows Explorer, doesn't result in the program playing the file; it only opens ReactOS MediaPlayer and doesn't know that it should open any file.

BTW: I didn't get that "No MCI device" bug in Win XP.

So while this still is better, I do not think it is yet half way complete towards a good media player.

--EDIT. How can programs like Trend Micro Internet Security get curved window boarders without transparency problems? How can other media players have all the features that you can't do? Is there a limit to programming possible in ReactOS programs, or can we get another developer to help? It is important for a nice program to really BE nice, eye candy and all.

[GreatLord]

own media player is like a big mind fild of pattent
we will not see a meida player be devloped by reactos devs.

it exists allot good player out their class media player opensource look like the old wmp and using same interface.

allot free spliter, codecc exists for directx.

only thing we need is the meida interface dshow
and allot filter

that is only thing we need provide then it is up to u choice the media player, I am using class media player, vlc and mplayer. I like mplayer it does using own codecc and filter, but the gui is bit buggi in windows

mplayer
(www.mplayerhq.hu)

VLC
(www.videolan.org)

class media player
can be found at www.doom9.org / www.sourceforge.net or www.videohelp.com

[artguy10]

If Windows can have their own media player, maybe ReactOS should have one too. I saw mf talking about a ReactOS picture viewer (Slides), for example. And what's up with patent issues, there are Free media players out there?

Anyway, I don't really like the GUI of any of those media players. Either it can't do much, or it doesn't look sleek, or both. And I've not found "class media player". Do you mean Media Player Classic? I heard there may be spyware in this media player, but I've seen elsewhere that it doesn't contain spyware.

About this media player, if the developers don't want to support it, I see no reason to develop it further, though it would be nice if this were improved and included in ROS.