vnc2swf-users

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Olivier H. <oli...@wa...>]

Interressed??? Maybe yes and maybe not...

In fact in the last days, i was thinking about a complete rewriting of pyvnc2swf ... to feet my special desire.. which looks like more a tool called pyvnc2FLV!.

In fact ... the compliency with other format will be easy to do (thanks to object model and python) ... But i think that if pyvnc2swf firstly become a tool for record and stream vlc session in flv format, it will be great and a good beginning!!

With help of others .... we can manage this kind of evolution.. Don't know because we have to establish a wishlist of what user wants of pyvnc2swf to get it involved... If this should lead to two different tools, new tools will emerge from pyvnc2swf.

So ... why don't we use this thread to discut about the future of pyvnc2swf and establish a wishlist?

I begin :

- safe file writer (every frames is write before the tool quit on a SIGINT or SIGTERM...).
- full flv support (cue points, keyframes)
- streaming (flv?, gstreamer?)
- better performance
- remove GUI from the pyvnc2swf core (we can write later a GUI when all in the command-line is ok and it remove also dependencies to useless packages for frame recording)
- removing the d3des.py and use something like pyCrypto for encryption purpose
- write more readable code (and use correct indentation (pyvnc2swf is indent with 2 char ... )

Olivier Hervieu.


----- Mail Original -----
De: "Yusuke Shinyama" <yu...@cs...>
À: "Olivier Hervieu" <oli...@wa...>, "General discussion about vnc2swf" <vnc...@li...>
Envoyé: Jeudi 16 Avril 2009 01h06:10 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne
Objet: Project Future

Hi,

On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:15:11 +0200, Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa...> wrote:
> Unfortunately, I do not know the desires of Euske on the roadmap of the 
> product ...

As a matter of fact, I'm recently getting less keen on this project.
It's not like that I completely lost my interest, but simply it's not in
my top priority anymore. Maybe it changes in future, or maybe not.

Anyway, my response for these requests are now slow. Sorry!
If someone is still interested in improving this piece of
software, I'd rather hand the project to that person and let them
develop it for suiting their own purposes. 

So, Olivier, aren't you interested in taking on this project?
Or anyone else? I can give an administrator account.
If you're not inclined to use SourceForge, it's okay to move 
to other hosting sites. 
Currently the main page of vnc2swf is hosted on my personal page,
so I can change that to point some other sites too.
(I'm eager to make the transision smooth to avoid users' confusion.)

Please let me know if anyone is interested.

Best,
Yusuke

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Olivier H. <oli...@wa...>]

What a wonderfull discussion ...

So if i resume ... there's two direction :
- some wants a recording tool (with or without GUI)
- some wants an authoring tool...

It's now time to choose.... I don't think that the same tool can do this two different things.

I love the idea to rename pyvnc2swf to pyvncrecorder.. and i think it sould be something like python remote recorder... because, with a modular architecture, and in the future, we will able to record remote protocols (not only vnc), and output this to several video format.

I'm agree, with other people, to take the lead on this project and "recode" pyvnc2swf in that way.

Authoring tool is a very exciting way too ... but it's not really in my interest to work on this kind of project.. So if someone wants to take the lead on this ... it will be great, and i will happy to collaborate :). 


----- Mail Original -----
De: "Reid Ellis" <ra...@tn...>
À: "General discussion about vnc2swf" <vnc...@li...>
Envoyé: Jeudi 16 Avril 2009 17h28:59 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne
Objet: Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

I agree about the GUI. That can be done as a separate project that  
perhaps uses pyvnc code. (I'm a big PyQt fan myself).

About the file formats -- I wasn't saying to support them all, just  
architect it so that others can add more as they like. Once you have  
to support two formats, architecting to support N formats is not a lot  
of extra work. Good design and all that.

Wow, this discussion certainly stirred up some action on the list. :-)

Reid

On Thu Apr 16, 2009, at 11:18 AM, Yusuke Shinyama wrote:
> Hi Olivier,
>
> Thanks for your reply.  Okay... so first I think
> I have to state my opinion about the project:
>
> * I don't want to touch GUI. Getting involved with GUI is not  
> worthwhile because
>   we'd have to spend most of the time for just debugging the interface
>   rather than adding or stablizing the core functions.
>   (Actually, I think that adding the GUI interface to pyvnc2swf was  
> a mistake.)
>
> * Depending less external libraries is better.
>   We're currently using only Python and Pygame and we already have
>   compatilibty problems (between python 2.3/2.4/2.5 and pygame 1.7/1.8
>   and minor platform issues). If we start using other GUI libraries
>   (Tk/Gtk/Qt/Wx or whatever) or crypto/encoding libraries, I'd expect
>   a big mess. I personally do not want to get involved with that.
>
> * Just support a few rock-solid core functions is enough.
>   After all, this is a spare-time project. I just want something  
> that is
>   simple and working. Nothing fancy. I like a Unixy way.
>
> So there you go. I don't have much desire to take a control of
> this project, but this is how I can support it.  After spending
> several years on this I'm now realizing my interest is somewhat
> shifted.  So if anyone really wants to be ambitious and expand the
> whole functionality, go for it and I'll try to help it as much as
> possible.  Maybe it's the time to split the project or restart
> from scratch.
>
> Yusuke
>
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:21:37 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa... 
> > wrote:
>>
>> So ... why don't we use this thread to discut about the future of  
>> pyvnc2swf and establish a wishlist?
>>
>> I begin :
>>
>> - safe file writer (every frames is write before the tool quit on a  
>> SIGINT or SIGTERM...).
>> - full flv support (cue points, keyframes)
>> - streaming (flv?, gstreamer?)
>> - better performance
>> - remove GUI from the pyvnc2swf core (we can write later a GUI when  
>> all in the command-line is ok and it remove also dependencies to  
>> useless packages for frame recording)
>> - removing the d3des.py and use something like pyCrypto for  
>> encryption purpose
>> - write more readable code (and use correct indentation (pyvnc2swf  
>> is indent with 2 char ... )
>>
>> Olivier Hervieu.


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Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[The A. <the...@gm...>]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Olivier Hervieu <
oli...@wa...> wrote:

> I love the idea to rename pyvnc2swf to pyvncrecorder.. and i think it sould
> be something like python remote recorder... because, with a modular
> architecture, and in the future, we will able to record remote protocols
> (not only vnc), and output this to several video format.
>

I think that'd be great.  vncrec hasn't been maintained in a long time and
pyvncrecorder would be a welcome update... like the aforementioned eschewing
of a GUI.

Then there's the question of what file format to record in (assuming that
ffmpeg can be used for transcoding into any other formats).  For most screen
captures, lossless encoding doesn't just look better, it ends up being
smaller too (due to large sections of identical colors and typically few
colors).  While it's possible to save in something like x264 or flv
losslessly, it's far, far more efficient to save a gzipped RFB (VNC's
format) data stream.  Trying to convert to something like x264 or flv in
real time is taxing (while modern computers can easily handle this for a
single recording, imagine running 40 instances -- which is what I've had to
do).  By comparison, gzip uses a trivial amount of CPU time.

For video transcoding, instead of a custom tool that can
playback/edit/convert that file (like vncrec does, but very poorly), write
an input filter for ffmpeg so it can read the .vnc files and convert them to
whatever you want.  Then you don't have to worry about what formats you want
to conver to.

-- 
http://theamigo.blogspot.com

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Olivier H. <oli...@wa...>]

Great, 

TheAmigo, i think that our needs are the same ... we have to record several (more than 2!!) vnc session on the same computer... 

your idea to write a ffmeg plugin is great that might interressed people who wants to have an authoring/transcoding tool shipped with pyvnc2swf. 

So for the next week i propose that everybody interressed in the project of a safe and fast vncrecorder to send on this mailing list what should and shouldn't be the the vncrecorder. 

I propose the same for people who are interressed in an authoring tool to send here what should be this vncauthoringtool. 

For the vncrecorder : 
- no GUI 
- minimal dependencies 
- mostly written in python (wrapper are not excluded) 
- full object 
- output only vnc stream (in a first time), with plugable interface to record in an another format. 

Please think for a sexy name ... 

For all, yusuke, your advices are welcome... 

----- Mail Original ----- 
De: "The Amigo" <the...@gm...> 
À: "General discussion about vnc2swf" <vnc...@li...> 
Envoyé: Jeudi 16 Avril 2009 20h39:19 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne 
Objet: Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future 


On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 12:06 PM, Olivier Hervieu < oli...@wa... > wrote: 


I love the idea to rename pyvnc2swf to pyvncrecorder.. and i think it sould be something like python remote recorder... because, with a modular architecture, and in the future, we will able to record remote protocols (not only vnc), and output this to several video format. 

I think that'd be great. vncrec hasn't been maintained in a long time and pyvncrecorder would be a welcome update... like the aforementioned eschewing of a GUI. 

Then there's the question of what file format to record in (assuming that ffmpeg can be used for transcoding into any other formats). For most screen captures, lossless encoding doesn't just look better, it ends up being smaller too (due to large sections of identical colors and typically few colors). While it's possible to save in something like x264 or flv losslessly, it's far, far more efficient to save a gzipped RFB (VNC's format) data stream. Trying to convert to something like x264 or flv in real time is taxing (while modern computers can easily handle this for a single recording, imagine running 40 instances -- which is what I've had to do). By comparison, gzip uses a trivial amount of CPU time. 

For video transcoding, instead of a custom tool that can playback/edit/convert that file (like vncrec does, but very poorly), write an input filter for ffmpeg so it can read the .vnc files and convert them to whatever you want. Then you don't have to worry about what formats you want to conver to. 

-- 
http://theamigo.blogspot.com 

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Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

Hi,

To create a speed-efficient recorder, we really need faster byte operations.
Probably the most expensive part in the current pyvnc2swf implementation is
just to convert the whole bitmap into another format. 

More specifically, look at line 61 in image.py:

def create_image_from_string_argb(w, h, data):
  data = ''.join([ data[i+1]+data[i+2]+data[i+3]+data[i] for i in xrange(0, len(data), 4) ])
  return pygame.image.fromstring(data, (w, h), 'RGBA')

Now imagine a VNC server sends you a 1600x1200 bitmap (7.6MBytes)
That's a lot of data for doing this kind of operation for each frame.

For some time I was thinking of writing some external functions in C, which
would be hundred times faster to do this kinda stuff. But it breaks
the beauty of platform-independentness.  This is the point where I was stuck.
People would need to install a C compiler to build pyvnc2swf. 
Perhaps it's not a big problem in Linux or *BSD, but I was afraid it brings
some extra trouble. I certainly expect complaints from Windows/Mac folks.

So... how do you guys think? Maybe I should ask people what kind
of platform they are using. If cross-platform is not a concern, I
think this is the way to go.

Yusuke


On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:33:16 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa...> wrote:
> Great, 
> 
> TheAmigo, i think that our needs are the same ... we have to record several (more than 2!!) vnc session on the same computer... 
> 
> your idea to write a ffmeg plugin is great that might interressed people who wants to have an authoring/transcoding tool shipped with pyvnc2swf. 
> 
> So for the next week i propose that everybody interressed in the project of a safe and fast vncrecorder to send on this mailing list what should and shouldn't be the the vncrecorder. 
> 
> I propose the same for people who are interressed in an authoring tool to send here what should be this vncauthoringtool. 
> 

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Matthias S. <mat...@uz...>]

hello,

you could use the C library if it is found/built (check at startup), otherwise, just use the python code? :)

matthias 
btw, I use it both under linux (home) & windows (work)

> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
> Van: Yusuke Shinyama [mailto:yu...@cs...] 
> Verzonden: vrijdag 17 april 2009 1:16
> Aan: General discussion about vnc2swf
> Onderwerp: Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future
> 
> Hi,
> 
> To create a speed-efficient recorder, we really need faster 
> byte operations.
> Probably the most expensive part in the current pyvnc2swf 
> implementation is
> just to convert the whole bitmap into another format. 
> 
> More specifically, look at line 61 in image.py:
> 
> def create_image_from_string_argb(w, h, data):
>   data = ''.join([ data[i+1]+data[i+2]+data[i+3]+data[i] for 
> i in xrange(0, len(data), 4) ])
>   return pygame.image.fromstring(data, (w, h), 'RGBA')
> 
> Now imagine a VNC server sends you a 1600x1200 bitmap (7.6MBytes)
> That's a lot of data for doing this kind of operation for each frame.
> 
> For some time I was thinking of writing some external 
> functions in C, which
> would be hundred times faster to do this kinda stuff. But it breaks
> the beauty of platform-independentness.  This is the point 
> where I was stuck.
> People would need to install a C compiler to build pyvnc2swf. 
> Perhaps it's not a big problem in Linux or *BSD, but I was 
> afraid it brings
> some extra trouble. I certainly expect complaints from 
> Windows/Mac folks.
> 
> So... how do you guys think? Maybe I should ask people what kind
> of platform they are using. If cross-platform is not a concern, I
> think this is the way to go.
> 
> Yusuke
> 
> 
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:33:16 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu 
> <oli...@wa...> wrote:
> > Great, 
> > 
> > TheAmigo, i think that our needs are the same ... we have 
> to record several (more than 2!!) vnc session on the same computer... 
> > 
> > your idea to write a ffmeg plugin is great that might 
> interressed people who wants to have an authoring/transcoding 
> tool shipped with pyvnc2swf. 
> > 
> > So for the next week i propose that everybody interressed 
> in the project of a safe and fast vncrecorder to send on this 
> mailing list what should and shouldn't be the the vncrecorder. 
> > 
> > I propose the same for people who are interressed in an 
> authoring tool to send here what should be this vncauthoringtool. 
> > 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------------
> Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and 
> around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save
> $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco.
> 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. 
> Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p
> _______________________________________________
> Vnc2swf-users mailing list
> Vnc...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vnc2swf-users
> 

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Werner F. B. <wer...@fr...>]

Matthias Sweertvaegher wrote:

...
>> Probably the most expensive part in the current pyvnc2swf 
>> implementation is
>> just to convert the whole bitmap into another format. 
>>
>> More specifically, look at line 61 in image.py:
>>
>> def create_image_from_string_argb(w, h, data):
>>   data = ''.join([ data[i+1]+data[i+2]+data[i+3]+data[i] for 
>> i in xrange(0, len(data), 4) ])
>>   return pygame.image.fromstring(data, (w, h), 'RGBA')
>>     
Could something like pil.image.frombuffer or pil.image.fromstring help 
here (pil = Python Imaging Library).

O.K. this would be a dependency but to me this would be better then 
having some custom c/c++ code.

Werner

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Ian W. <ia...@ex...>]

I have a C module with a fallback to a python module in a library I 
wrote.  It's also nice to have a python implementation to validate the C 
implementation.

Don't fear C.  C runs everywhere.  If you don't want your users to need 
a compiler, I'm sure you can find volunteers to run "setup.py bdist_egg" 
on OSX, Windows, etc.

Also, if your library is fast more people will use it.

Ian

Matthias Sweertvaegher wrote:
> hello,
> 
> you could use the C library if it is found/built (check at startup), otherwise, just use the python code? :)
> 
> matthias 
> btw, I use it both under linux (home) & windows (work)
> 
>> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
>> Van: Yusuke Shinyama [mailto:yu...@cs...] 
>> Verzonden: vrijdag 17 april 2009 1:16
>> Aan: General discussion about vnc2swf
>> Onderwerp: Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> To create a speed-efficient recorder, we really need faster 
>> byte operations.
>> Probably the most expensive part in the current pyvnc2swf 
>> implementation is
>> just to convert the whole bitmap into another format. 
>>
>> More specifically, look at line 61 in image.py:
>>
>> def create_image_from_string_argb(w, h, data):
>>   data = ''.join([ data[i+1]+data[i+2]+data[i+3]+data[i] for 
>> i in xrange(0, len(data), 4) ])
>>   return pygame.image.fromstring(data, (w, h), 'RGBA')
>>
>> Now imagine a VNC server sends you a 1600x1200 bitmap (7.6MBytes)
>> That's a lot of data for doing this kind of operation for each frame.
>>
>> For some time I was thinking of writing some external 
>> functions in C, which
>> would be hundred times faster to do this kinda stuff. But it breaks
>> the beauty of platform-independentness.  This is the point 
>> where I was stuck.
>> People would need to install a C compiler to build pyvnc2swf. 
>> Perhaps it's not a big problem in Linux or *BSD, but I was 
>> afraid it brings
>> some extra trouble. I certainly expect complaints from 
>> Windows/Mac folks.
>>
>> So... how do you guys think? Maybe I should ask people what kind
>> of platform they are using. If cross-platform is not a concern, I
>> think this is the way to go.
>>
>> Yusuke
>>
>>
>> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:33:16 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu 
>> <oli...@wa...> wrote:
>>> Great, 
>>>
>>> TheAmigo, i think that our needs are the same ... we have 
>> to record several (more than 2!!) vnc session on the same computer... 
>>> your idea to write a ffmeg plugin is great that might 
>> interressed people who wants to have an authoring/transcoding 
>> tool shipped with pyvnc2swf. 
>>> So for the next week i propose that everybody interressed 
>> in the project of a safe and fast vncrecorder to send on this 
>> mailing list what should and shouldn't be the the vncrecorder. 
>>> I propose the same for people who are interressed in an 
>> authoring tool to send here what should be this vncauthoringtool. 
>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------------
>> Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and 
>> around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save
>> $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco.
>> 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. 
>> Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p
>> _______________________________________________
>> Vnc2swf-users mailing list
>> Vnc...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vnc2swf-users
>>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Stay on top of everything new and different, both inside and 
> around Java (TM) technology - register by April 22, and save
> $200 on the JavaOne (SM) conference, June 2-5, 2009, San Francisco.
> 300 plus technical and hands-on sessions. Register today. 
> Use priority code J9JMT32. http://p.sf.net/sfu/p
> _______________________________________________
> Vnc2swf-users mailing list
> Vnc...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vnc2swf-users
> 

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Toby H. <th...@ca...>]

Ian Ward <ia...@ex...> wrote on 17/04/2009 09:59:46 AM:
> I have a C module with a fallback to a python module in a library I
> wrote.  It's also nice to have a python implementation to validate the C
> implementation.
>
> Don't fear C.  C runs everywhere.  If you don't want your users to need
> a compiler, I'm sure you can find volunteers to run "setup.py bdist_egg"
> on OSX, Windows, etc.
>
> Also, if your library is fast more people will use it.

There is a more python-like half-way house. Check out Pyrex:

http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/greg.ewing/python/Pyrex/

>From the homepage:

Pyrex lets you write code that mixes Python and C data types any way you
want, and compiles it into a C extension for Python.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Reid E. <ra...@tn...>]

Well as mentioned before, we should be recording some sort of  
compressed (gzip?) vnc stream, and then converting the data  
afterwards. Actually, we could spawn a second thread that just  
converts the data stream to whatever format the user has selected. In  
this day of multi-core CPUs, this surely makes sense.

Reid

On Apr 16, 2009, at 19:15, Yusuke Shinyama wrote:
> Hi,
>
> To create a speed-efficient recorder, we really need faster byte  
> operations.
> Probably the most expensive part in the current pyvnc2swf  
> implementation is
> just to convert the whole bitmap into another format.
>
> More specifically, look at line 61 in image.py:
>
> def create_image_from_string_argb(w, h, data):
>  data = ''.join([ data[i+1]+data[i+2]+data[i+3]+data[i] for i in  
> xrange(0, len(data), 4) ])
>  return pygame.image.fromstring(data, (w, h), 'RGBA')
>
> Now imagine a VNC server sends you a 1600x1200 bitmap (7.6MBytes)
> That's a lot of data for doing this kind of operation for each frame.
>
> For some time I was thinking of writing some external functions in  
> C, which
> would be hundred times faster to do this kinda stuff. But it breaks
> the beauty of platform-independentness.  This is the point where I  
> was stuck.
> People would need to install a C compiler to build pyvnc2swf.
> Perhaps it's not a big problem in Linux or *BSD, but I was afraid it  
> brings
> some extra trouble. I certainly expect complaints from Windows/Mac  
> folks.
>
> So... how do you guys think? Maybe I should ask people what kind
> of platform they are using. If cross-platform is not a concern, I
> think this is the way to go.
>
> Yusuke
>
>
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:33:16 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa... 
> > wrote:
>> Great,
>>
>> TheAmigo, i think that our needs are the same ... we have to record  
>> several (more than 2!!) vnc session on the same computer...
>>
>> your idea to write a ffmeg plugin is great that might interressed  
>> people who wants to have an authoring/transcoding tool shipped with  
>> pyvnc2swf.
>>
>> So for the next week i propose that everybody interressed in the  
>> project of a safe and fast vncrecorder to send on this mailing list  
>> what should and shouldn't be the the vncrecorder.
>>
>> I propose the same for people who are interressed in an authoring  
>> tool to send here what should be this vncauthoringtool.

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Olivier H. <oli...@wa...>]

Greetings!

Okay .. i'm already in redesigning pyvnc in the following way :

- a main thread that handle a connection to a vnc server and request for update, and grab the updated data. These one are put in a queue
- a second thread (the encoder). That take data avalaible in the queue and encode it to the final output.
- a third thread that handle the queue.

The idea is to avoid frame dropping in case of very intensive encoding. The vnc session can be closed and the encoding can continue.

To support several format, i propose that vncrec support a configuration file ...

For exemple

pyvncrec.conf :

#Kind of output
[mpeg]
module=mpegenc
class=MpegOut

[flv]
module=flvenc
class=FLVOut

[vnc]
module=vncenc
class=VNCEnc

And on command line : 
pyvncrec -t flv -o output.flv will call the good encoder ... easy isn't it?

So pyvncrec will provide some outputter (firstly gzipped vnc), but everybody could write his own outputter.. whatever if it is or not cross platform... the best one will be shipped with the main distribution (those who are efficient and cross platform).

Regards, 

Olivier

----- Mail Original -----
De: "Reid Ellis" <ra...@tn...>
À: "General discussion about vnc2swf" <vnc...@li...>
Envoyé: Vendredi 17 Avril 2009 01h26:13 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne
Objet: Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

Well as mentioned before, we should be recording some sort of  
compressed (gzip?) vnc stream, and then converting the data  
afterwards. Actually, we could spawn a second thread that just  
converts the data stream to whatever format the user has selected. In  
this day of multi-core CPUs, this surely makes sense.

Reid

On Apr 16, 2009, at 19:15, Yusuke Shinyama wrote:
> Hi,
>
> To create a speed-efficient recorder, we really need faster byte  
> operations.
> Probably the most expensive part in the current pyvnc2swf  
> implementation is
> just to convert the whole bitmap into another format.
>
> More specifically, look at line 61 in image.py:
>
> def create_image_from_string_argb(w, h, data):
>  data = ''.join([ data[i+1]+data[i+2]+data[i+3]+data[i] for i in  
> xrange(0, len(data), 4) ])
>  return pygame.image.fromstring(data, (w, h), 'RGBA')
>
> Now imagine a VNC server sends you a 1600x1200 bitmap (7.6MBytes)
> That's a lot of data for doing this kind of operation for each frame.
>
> For some time I was thinking of writing some external functions in  
> C, which
> would be hundred times faster to do this kinda stuff. But it breaks
> the beauty of platform-independentness.  This is the point where I  
> was stuck.
> People would need to install a C compiler to build pyvnc2swf.
> Perhaps it's not a big problem in Linux or *BSD, but I was afraid it  
> brings
> some extra trouble. I certainly expect complaints from Windows/Mac  
> folks.
>
> So... how do you guys think? Maybe I should ask people what kind
> of platform they are using. If cross-platform is not a concern, I
> think this is the way to go.
>
> Yusuke
>
>
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:33:16 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa... 
> > wrote:
>> Great,
>>
>> TheAmigo, i think that our needs are the same ... we have to record  
>> several (more than 2!!) vnc session on the same computer...
>>
>> your idea to write a ffmeg plugin is great that might interressed  
>> people who wants to have an authoring/transcoding tool shipped with  
>> pyvnc2swf.
>>
>> So for the next week i propose that everybody interressed in the  
>> project of a safe and fast vncrecorder to send on this mailing list  
>> what should and shouldn't be the the vncrecorder.
>>
>> I propose the same for people who are interressed in an authoring  
>> tool to send here what should be this vncauthoringtool.


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Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

On Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:45:05 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa...> wrote:
> 
> To support several format, i propose that vncrec support a configuration file ...
> 
> For exemple
> 
> pyvncrec.conf :
> 
> #Kind of output
> [mpeg]
> module=mpegenc
> class=MpegOut
> 
> [flv]
> module=flvenc
> class=FLVOut
> 
> [vnc]
> module=vncenc
> class=VNCEnc
> 

Well, I guess it's easier to handle settings within a Python code,
rather than using yet another config file format. You can
write your own settings in a file, say, config.py in Python and just make the program
import it. The virtue of a scripting language is that you can use
the language itself as a config parser. In my experience, it's a lot
easier and bug-free.

Yusuke

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:26:13 -0400, Reid Ellis <ra...@tn...> wrote:
> Well as mentioned before, we should be recording some sort of  
> compressed (gzip?) vnc stream, and then converting the data  
> afterwards. Actually, we could spawn a second thread that just  
> converts the data stream to whatever format the user has selected. In  
> this day of multi-core CPUs, this surely makes sense.
> 
> Reid

I don't agree. It might improve the overall response time, but it
does not address the CPU hogging issue, because whether encoding
is handled in a separate thread or not it still eats a lot of CPU
time. Also, I feel that using multiple threads will lead a rather
tricky coding technique, which I hope to avoid as much as possible.

The point I was trying to make is that encoding can be done
*cheaper* if we use C. Otherwise, we can anyway spend a certain
amount of CPU in exchange for the pure-Python, cross-platform world.

So the real question here should be whether we should abandon
the cross platformness for efficiency or not. I'm not decided.
It depends on what other people are using and how they think about
the efficiency.

Yusuke

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Reid E. <ra...@tn...>]

If you are going to generalize for two formats, it's the same as for  
*any* format. Perhaps the format should be removed from the name?  
Something more like pyvncrecord or something? Personally, I would love  
to have output in ogg / mpg / divx / m4p..

Reid

On Thu Apr 16, 2009, at 6:21 AM, Olivier Hervieu wrote:
> Interressed??? Maybe yes and maybe not...
>
> In fact in the last days, i was thinking about a complete rewriting  
> of pyvnc2swf ... to feet my special desire.. which looks like more a  
> tool called pyvnc2FLV!.
>
> In fact ... the compliency with other format will be easy to do  
> (thanks to object model and python) ... But i think that if  
> pyvnc2swf firstly become a tool for record and stream vlc session in  
> flv format, it will be great and a good beginning!!
>
> With help of others .... we can manage this kind of evolution..  
> Don't know because we have to establish a wishlist of what user  
> wants of pyvnc2swf to get it involved... If this should lead to two  
> different tools, new tools will emerge from pyvnc2swf.
>
> So ... why don't we use this thread to discut about the future of  
> pyvnc2swf and establish a wishlist?
>
> I begin :
>
> - safe file writer (every frames is write before the tool quit on a  
> SIGINT or SIGTERM...).
> - full flv support (cue points, keyframes)
> - streaming (flv?, gstreamer?)
> - better performance
> - remove GUI from the pyvnc2swf core (we can write later a GUI when  
> all in the command-line is ok and it remove also dependencies to  
> useless packages for frame recording)
> - removing the d3des.py and use something like pyCrypto for  
> encryption purpose
> - write more readable code (and use correct indentation (pyvnc2swf  
> is indent with 2 char ... )
>
> Olivier Hervieu.
>
>
> ----- Mail Original -----
> De: "Yusuke Shinyama" <yu...@cs...>
> À: "Olivier Hervieu" <oli...@wa...>, "General  
> discussion about vnc2swf" <vnc...@li...>
> Envoyé: Jeudi 16 Avril 2009 01h06:10 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin /  
> Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne
> Objet: Project Future
>
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:15:11 +0200, Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa... 
> > wrote:
>> Unfortunately, I do not know the desires of Euske on the roadmap of  
>> the
>> product ...
>
> As a matter of fact, I'm recently getting less keen on this project.
> It's not like that I completely lost my interest, but simply it's  
> not in
> my top priority anymore. Maybe it changes in future, or maybe not.
>
> Anyway, my response for these requests are now slow. Sorry!
> If someone is still interested in improving this piece of
> software, I'd rather hand the project to that person and let them
> develop it for suiting their own purposes.
>
> So, Olivier, aren't you interested in taking on this project?
> Or anyone else? I can give an administrator account.
> If you're not inclined to use SourceForge, it's okay to move
> to other hosting sites.
> Currently the main page of vnc2swf is hosted on my personal page,
> so I can change that to point some other sites too.
> (I'm eager to make the transision smooth to avoid users' confusion.)
>
> Please let me know if anyone is interested.
>
> Best,
> Yusuke

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Fabiano C. D. <fcd...@gm...>]

2009/4/16 Reid Ellis <ra...@tn...>:
> If you are going to generalize for two formats, it's the same as for
> *any* format. Perhaps the format should be removed from the name?
> Something more like pyvncrecord or something? Personally, I would love
> to have output in ogg / mpg / divx / m4p..
>
> Reid

I think mp4 is enough... further encodings/conversions can be made
with ffmpeg and mencoder.

Fabiano.

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:59:01 -0400, Reid Ellis <ra...@tn...> wrote:
> If you are going to generalize for two formats, it's the same as for  
> *any* format. Perhaps the format should be removed from the name?  
> Something more like pyvncrecord or something? Personally, I would love  
> to have output in ogg / mpg / divx / m4p..
> 
> Reid

Well, the input does not have to be VNC then.
This kind of expansion is tempting and you can go on and on.
But, IMO it's better to stick with a few de-facto standard
(actually, fewer is better!) formats to keep the task manageable.

I've seen a quite few open source projects which have got
a really ambitious plan and never be finished.

Yusuke

[Vnc2swf-users] Res: Project Future

[<lfk...@ya...>]

Hi,

I contributed with a few things for pyvnc2swf including the flv output.  Yusuke was responsable for making it work properly, because unfortunately python is not my world.

I've been thinking for a while in creating a new application in Java specially for editing and saving recordings in different formats.  There are so many open source libraries in Java, including libraries for working with Flash files.
There is one special project that I think is really cool:  TeleTeachingTool 
It was developed and it's been used in a university in Germany.  It allows broadcast of the screen, audio and optionally from a camera. It's been used to record long lectures and the result seems very good.  It can save the recordings in flash with thumbnails created automatically.
It could be improved to save in FLV format also.
But what I really miss is an application for postprocessing the recording, that allows editing, merging, cutting, including text and sound, etc, with a good GUI.
The recording can be done with pvnc2swf, vncrec, TeleTeachingTool or any other tool. There could be an effort to create an efficient recorder but in my opinion we miss a postprocessing tool that is not tied with it's own recorder.

Luis Fernando






________________________________
De: Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa...>
Para: Yusuke Shinyama <yu...@cs...>
Cc: General discussion about vnc2swf <vnc...@li...>
Enviadas: Quinta-feira, 16 de Abril de 2009 7:21:37
Assunto: Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

Interressed??? Maybe yes and maybe not...

In fact in the last days, i was thinking about a complete rewriting of pyvnc2swf ... to feet my special desire.. which looks like more a tool called pyvnc2FLV!.

In fact ... the compliency with other format will be easy to do (thanks to object model and python) ... But i think that if pyvnc2swf firstly become a tool for record and stream vlc session in flv format, it will be great and a good beginning!!

With help of others .... we can manage this kind of evolution.. Don't know because we have to establish a wishlist of what user wants of pyvnc2swf to get it involved... If this should lead to two different tools, new tools will emerge from pyvnc2swf.

So ... why don't we use this thread to discut about the future of pyvnc2swf and establish a wishlist?

I begin :

- safe file writer (every frames is write before the tool quit on a SIGINT or SIGTERM...).
- full flv support (cue points, keyframes)
- streaming (flv?, gstreamer?)
- better performance
- remove GUI from the pyvnc2swf core (we can write later a GUI when all in the command-line is ok and it remove also dependencies to useless packages for frame recording)
- removing the d3des.py and use something like pyCrypto for encryption purpose
- write more readable code (and use correct indentation (pyvnc2swf is indent with 2 char ... )

Olivier Hervieu.


----- Mail Original -----
De: "Yusuke Shinyama" <yu...@cs...>
À: "Olivier Hervieu" <oli...@wa...>, "General discussion about vnc2swf" <vnc...@li...>
Envoyé: Jeudi 16 Avril 2009 01h06:10 GMT +01:00 Amsterdam / Berlin / Berne / Rome / Stockholm / Vienne
Objet: Project Future

Hi,

On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:15:11 +0200, Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa...> wrote:
> Unfortunately, I do not know the desires of Euske on the roadmap of the 
> product ...

As a matter of fact, I'm recently getting less keen on this project.
It's not like that I completely lost my interest, but simply it's not in
my top priority anymore. Maybe it changes in future, or maybe not.

Anyway, my response for these requests are now slow. Sorry!
If someone is still interested in improving this piece of
software, I'd rather hand the project to that person and let them
develop it for suiting their own purposes. 

So, Olivier, aren't you interested in taking on this project?
Or anyone else? I can give an administrator account.
If you're not inclined to use SourceForge, it's okay to move 
to other hosting sites. 
Currently the main page of vnc2swf is hosted on my personal page,
so I can change that to point some other sites too.
(I'm eager to make the transision smooth to avoid users' confusion.)

Please let me know if anyone is interested.

Best,
Yusuke

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Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Res: Project Future

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

Hi Luis, thanks for your comments.

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:55:53 -0700 (PDT), lfk...@ya... wrote:
>
> But what I really miss is an application for postprocessing the
> recording, that allows editing, merging, cutting, including text
> and sound, etc, with a good GUI.  The recording can be done with
> pvnc2swf, vncrec, TeleTeachingTool or any other tool. There
> could be an effort to create an efficient recorder but in my
> opinion we miss a postprocessing tool that is not tied with it's
> own recorder.

Personally, I think GUI is not necessarily needed for editing.
Once I was planning to write another tool like edit.py
that can "script" a movie with using Python; you could
write something like this:

  movie = Movie("output.flv")
  movie.add_caption("title")
  movie.wait(10)
  movie.load("a.flv")
  movie.add_caption("this is my desktop.")
  movie.load("b.flv")
  ...

Yusuke

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Yusuke S. <yu...@cs...>]

Hi Olivier,

Thanks for your reply.  Okay... so first I think
I have to state my opinion about the project:

 * I don't want to touch GUI. Getting involved with GUI is not worthwhile because
   we'd have to spend most of the time for just debugging the interface
   rather than adding or stablizing the core functions.
   (Actually, I think that adding the GUI interface to pyvnc2swf was a mistake.)

 * Depending less external libraries is better. 
   We're currently using only Python and Pygame and we already have
   compatilibty problems (between python 2.3/2.4/2.5 and pygame 1.7/1.8 
   and minor platform issues). If we start using other GUI libraries
   (Tk/Gtk/Qt/Wx or whatever) or crypto/encoding libraries, I'd expect
   a big mess. I personally do not want to get involved with that.

 * Just support a few rock-solid core functions is enough.
   After all, this is a spare-time project. I just want something that is
   simple and working. Nothing fancy. I like a Unixy way.

So there you go. I don't have much desire to take a control of
this project, but this is how I can support it.  After spending
several years on this I'm now realizing my interest is somewhat
shifted.  So if anyone really wants to be ambitious and expand the
whole functionality, go for it and I'll try to help it as much as
possible.  Maybe it's the time to split the project or restart
from scratch.

Yusuke


On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:21:37 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa...> wrote:
> 
> So ... why don't we use this thread to discut about the future of pyvnc2swf and establish a wishlist?
> 
> I begin :
> 
> - safe file writer (every frames is write before the tool quit on a SIGINT or SIGTERM...).
> - full flv support (cue points, keyframes)
> - streaming (flv?, gstreamer?)
> - better performance
> - remove GUI from the pyvnc2swf core (we can write later a GUI when all in the command-line is ok and it remove also dependencies to useless packages for frame recording)
> - removing the d3des.py and use something like pyCrypto for encryption purpose
> - write more readable code (and use correct indentation (pyvnc2swf is indent with 2 char ... )
> 
> Olivier Hervieu.

Re: [Vnc2swf-users] Project Future

[Reid E. <ra...@tn...>]

I agree about the GUI. That can be done as a separate project that  
perhaps uses pyvnc code. (I'm a big PyQt fan myself).

About the file formats -- I wasn't saying to support them all, just  
architect it so that others can add more as they like. Once you have  
to support two formats, architecting to support N formats is not a lot  
of extra work. Good design and all that.

Wow, this discussion certainly stirred up some action on the list. :-)

Reid

On Thu Apr 16, 2009, at 11:18 AM, Yusuke Shinyama wrote:
> Hi Olivier,
>
> Thanks for your reply.  Okay... so first I think
> I have to state my opinion about the project:
>
> * I don't want to touch GUI. Getting involved with GUI is not  
> worthwhile because
>   we'd have to spend most of the time for just debugging the interface
>   rather than adding or stablizing the core functions.
>   (Actually, I think that adding the GUI interface to pyvnc2swf was  
> a mistake.)
>
> * Depending less external libraries is better.
>   We're currently using only Python and Pygame and we already have
>   compatilibty problems (between python 2.3/2.4/2.5 and pygame 1.7/1.8
>   and minor platform issues). If we start using other GUI libraries
>   (Tk/Gtk/Qt/Wx or whatever) or crypto/encoding libraries, I'd expect
>   a big mess. I personally do not want to get involved with that.
>
> * Just support a few rock-solid core functions is enough.
>   After all, this is a spare-time project. I just want something  
> that is
>   simple and working. Nothing fancy. I like a Unixy way.
>
> So there you go. I don't have much desire to take a control of
> this project, but this is how I can support it.  After spending
> several years on this I'm now realizing my interest is somewhat
> shifted.  So if anyone really wants to be ambitious and expand the
> whole functionality, go for it and I'll try to help it as much as
> possible.  Maybe it's the time to split the project or restart
> from scratch.
>
> Yusuke
>
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2009 12:21:37 +0200 (CEST), Olivier Hervieu <oli...@wa... 
> > wrote:
>>
>> So ... why don't we use this thread to discut about the future of  
>> pyvnc2swf and establish a wishlist?
>>
>> I begin :
>>
>> - safe file writer (every frames is write before the tool quit on a  
>> SIGINT or SIGTERM...).
>> - full flv support (cue points, keyframes)
>> - streaming (flv?, gstreamer?)
>> - better performance
>> - remove GUI from the pyvnc2swf core (we can write later a GUI when  
>> all in the command-line is ok and it remove also dependencies to  
>> useless packages for frame recording)
>> - removing the d3des.py and use something like pyCrypto for  
>> encryption purpose
>> - write more readable code (and use correct indentation (pyvnc2swf  
>> is indent with 2 char ... )
>>
>> Olivier Hervieu.