I'm developing a WPF based app in C# and I want to play an h.264/aac encoded mp4 file from a stream source that derives from System.IO.Stream.
I can play videos directly from local files, and from a URL source, but I also need to playback video from a data source that derives from System.IO.Stream. Specifically, I'm using a product from Eldos called Solid File System (http://eldos.com/solfs/) which allows you to create virtual file systems inside a single file. To access data stored inside a SolidFS file they offer SolFSStream which derives from System.IO.Stream.
Does anyone know of a .Net Framework API, or third party API that will allow me to play the video by passing in the stream reference?
My preference would be to copy the files to a temp directory that the application can access, then use a simple to use and robust library to play the file e.g http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.mediaplayer.aspx
My reasoning would be that supporting stream may not be the best criterea to choose a third party library to play mp4 files. You need to ensure that the library is robust and easy to integrate with your existing application.
Please note, by referring to the MediaPlayer class I am not saying that this is the most robust library, but it has met my use cases in the past and was easy to integrate with the application.
DirectX had some methods to play custom streams, but I don't know details. Also, we offer OS edition of SolFS for usage scenarios like yours - you can have a virtual disk with OS edition and play from there (and disk access can be restricted to only your application and the player for security).
Related
Is there a way in MVVMCross, without creating my own plugin, to open a file stream for writing and/or for reading? The MvxFileStore only supports byte array reading and writing and i could really use some stream handling here to manage big files or streaming encryption.
I am currently using MVVMCross 3.0.14.
The built in interface does provide you with two file stream methods - see WriteFile and TryReadBinaryFile in https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross/blob/v3.1/Plugins/Cirrious/File/Cirrious.MvvmCross.Plugins.File/IMvxFileStore.cs
If these aren't sufficient for you, then you could create and inject your own IStreamFileService implementations - you don't have to do this as a plugin, you can just define them in your platform specific code, and register them in setup.
plugins have reusability advantages, but implementing direct in the UI projects is perfectly acceptable too - whatever your app needs.
I am making a general question since I am a developer and I have no advance experience on video elaboration. I have to preparare a web application with the purpose to allow video files upload on our company server and then video elaboration by server, on user command. The purpose of the web application is to allow to the user to make some elaboration on video depending on user action launch from the web app:
(server has to ) convert video in different format(mp4, flv...)
extact keyframes from video and saves them in jpeg format
possibility to extract audio from video
automatic control of quality audio & video (black frames,silences detection)
change scene detection and keyframe extraction
.....
This what's my bosses wanted from the web based application (with the server support obviously), and I understand only the first 3 points of this list, the rest for me was arabic....
My question is: Which is the best and fastest server side application for this works, that can support multiple batch video conversions, from command line (comand line for php-soap-socket interaction or something else..)?
Is suitable Adobe Media Server for batch video conversion?
Which are adobe products that can be used for this purpose?
Note: I have experience with Indesign Server scripting programing (sending xml with php and soap call...), and I am looking to something similiar for video elaboration.
I will appreciate any answers.
THANKS ALL
I suggest you start with the open source project FFmpeg. You can call the program from the command line and via a series of arguments specify the desired output types, thumbnails, etc.
As an aside, when you start looking around at Video related projects (MediaShare for example) you will find they are all using FFmpeg for their video processing.
as Nathan suggested, FFMPEG is the first choice. Also you can check MEncoder
Just to elaborate:
1) (server has to ) convert video in different format(mp4, flv...)
both FFMPEG and mencoder do this well
2) extact keyframes from video and saves them in jpeg format
as I know it's impossible using command-line interface of FFMPEG, not sure about mencoder. However they can save all frames as separate images
3) possibility to extract audio from video
both FFMPEG and mencoder do this well
4) automatic control of quality audio & video (black frames,silences detection)
you need to code this, using FFMPEG libraries or mencoder
5) change scene detection and keyframe extraction
it's not clear what your boss imposes here
I tried lot of videos converting in server side using advance Xuggler API libraries.
Xuggler is a free open-source library for Java developers which can be used to uncompress,
manipulate, and compress recorded or live video in real time. Xuggler uses the very
powerful FFmpeg media handling libraries under the hood, essentially playing the role of a
java wrapper around them. It is the easy way to uncompress, modify, and re-compress any
media file (or stream) from Java.
WebLinks : 1) http://www.xuggle.com/ -official website
2) http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2011/02/introduction-xuggler-video-
manipulation.html - example
Is there any archive format that offers the following:
be digitally sign-able with a digital certificate from a trusted source like Verisign - for preventing changes to the file (I am not referring to read only, but in case the file was changed it should no longer be signed telling the user this is not the original file)
be stream-able - be able to be opened even if not all of the content has been transferred (also not strictly linearly)
be "readable" - be able to read the data without extracting to a temporary folder (AFAIK if you open a file in a zip archive it is extracted first, and this stays true even for zip based formats like OOXML. This is not what I want)
be portable - support on at least Windows, Linux and Mac OS X is a must, or at least future support
be free of patents - Be open source - also preferably a license that allows commercial use(as far as i know GPL a share-alike license so it doesn't allow commercial use, BSD on the other hand allows it)
Note: Though it may come in handy eventually I can not think right now of a scenario that would require both point 1 and point 2 simultaneously. Or lets leave it a be able to check the signature only when the whole file was downloaded.
I am not interested in:
being able to be compressed
being supported on legacy systems
Does any existing archive format fit this description (tar evolutions like DAR and pax come to mind) ?
If there is, are there programing libraries available for the above mentioned OSs?
If not, would it be hard to create such a thing?
Usage scenario:
I want to use this to create a new media container.
Current media containers contain the audio, video and subtitle streams directly.
Matroska, currently the most advanced container, has supplementary features like attachments and menus.
The menu functionality however is not implemented and very limited.
What I want to create is one level higher.
I want to create a file similar in a way to OOXML.
Also all of the menuing should be done in web technologies like HTML5 (as it is now the tag allows for any kind of codec to be used) and CSS.
Also just like you have holograms on dvds to prove the authenticity I want to create a sign-able file
Research notes:
Before asking this question I stumbled uppon this:
Whats the best way digitally sign a zip file for download using .Net
While detached signing would be feasable for the individual files contained in this archive it is not an ellegant solution for the archive file. Not end user friendly.End users should be able to doubleclick the file to open it in a media player like VLC, and see a message that the file is legit (just like you see in a browser if the page is transmitted with SSL through HTTPS or not)
EDIT: clarified point 5
EDIT 2: added a note to clarify point 1 and 2
EDIT 3: added usage scenario
EDIT 4: added research notes section
P.S.: This is my first question on StackOverflow
I doubt that you find such format out of the box. I understand how such solution can be built with help of our SolFS, but SolFS doesn't have built-in signing (you can add signing easily).
I'm working on a WinForms C# 3.0 / .NET 3.5 project involving building some canned reports. One of the requirements of the project is to export to PDF format, and currently doing so to disk is working just fine. The question was raised, however, if it's possible to export the file to a stream and open it directly in the native viewer on the client, skipping entirely writing it to disk. I know that this is somewhat possible with ASP.Net through the use of Response.Write() headers and the like, but I need to try to do this with standard WinForms/WPF, and I've exhausted my own ideas for it. Anybody have any insight on how it might be done, if it's possible at all? Or does the file have to be written to disk first, then opened separately?
I think it is important that you ask yourself what you accomplish if you bypass the file system. Writing to a the standard temporary folder is a perfectly acceptable solution. This is typically how browsers let you view media files and pdfs. I would concentrate on writing a nice cleanup function, that removes the temporary file after it has been create. Also what would be the purpose of exporting to PDF if you are not saving the file?
Under Unix / Linux you could have made a named pipe in the file system. This make sense if you have a huge media stream that you want to buffer between applications. In the PDF case you win very little.
Export to a temporary folder. It is Ok.
You will need to write the PDF to a temp directory.
The only way to display a PDF from an in-memory stream is to embed a third-party PDF viewer control
I am setting up my hi-fi to stream music from my PC. The hi-fi can see all of the files in my music folder, but I want to be able to stream across the audio I am currently playing. The hi-fi however does not have support for this.
So I've found a .dll that wraps directsound and offers it streaming as a continuous mp3 file on my PC from localhost:8124
I want to make a file in my music folder that will point to this (i.e. audio.mp3). So when my hi-fi streams audio.mp3 and plays it, it will actually receive the contents from localhost:8124.
I've tried using symbolic links, but they don't seem to allow me to do this.
Finally I am running Windows 7.
Can I do this? and if so how?
You can't do that. You can't create something that looks like a file, but actually streams the content from some other location.
If your hi-fi doesn't support streaming, there's no solution. If it does support streaming, you'll need to find a way to support the streaming protocol it does handle.