Re: [xine-devel] Multiple Channel support in xine.

[Siggi L. <si...@us...>]

Hi,

On Mon, 17 Sep 2001, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:

> I want to support multiple Video Channels in xine.
> There are two sources I know of that can have muliple channels: -
> 1) DVDs with their multiple angles.
> 2) MPEG Transport streams with the possible multiple Programs (Groups of
> Audio and Video).
> 
> The DVDs get their info from the input plugin.
> The Transport streams get their info from the demuxer plugin.

seems correct so far.
But there are surely other types of "multi-video" streams. Does anybody
know something else?

The more interesting thing is who selects the right channel.
in 1) the input plugin has to skip all the "wrong" channels
in 2) the demuxer has to do this job

In order to provide a unified interface to applications (like aaxine), the
xine engine should hold the current channel/program/view or whatever we
want to call it and provide a set method for the UI and a get method for
input/demuxer plugins.

> I would suggest that the gui hold an list of channels.
> The list would have two variables.
> 1) Physical Channel number (Program numbers for transport streams-16bits),
> Angle numbers for DVDs.(5 bits))
> 2) Text string to display to user.

Sounds sensible. The text string should be limited in size, though. So we
can make sure it fits in a finite GUI display. Maybe allow for a
short/long version?
We'll need a method in the xine engine to update the list of available
channels. This could be called by input/demuxer plugins or whatever can
tell xine about new channels.

> So the GUI would display the text string for the user, and when selected, it
> would send the number to xine-lib.
> xine-lib would have to work out if the number should go to the dvd input
> plugin or the demux_ts.c

I guess it's easier to just hold the number and plugins can request
it. That gives us a problem, of course, if we have nested views:
Imagine the input plugin provides two streams and each of those has 3
angles. So maybe we have to maintain two (or more) lists, one for each
plugin type that supports multiple streams...

> Could someone please add support for this type of thing into the GUI.
> I suggest a pull down menu. I will add support into xine-lib.

We have something _very_ similar for subtitles (quite new, newer than
0.9.0), so you may want to have a look at that and forget what I suggested
;-)

Cheers,
	Siggi