GSoC proposal review

[Abhinandan Ramprasath]

Here's an updated version of my proposal.
Thanks in advance.


*

Basic Details:

Name: Abhinandan Ramaprasath

Email Address: abhiin1947 at gmail.com

Freenode IRC Nick: abhiin1947

IM Service and Username: Gtalk - abhiin1947

Location (City, Country and/or Time Zone): Chennai, India, UTC+05:30

Proposal Title:

Implementing Unified CUE sheet and chapter support in Amarok

Motivation for project:

Audiobooks are usually quite lengthy and go on for hours. It is not always
possible for people to finish listening to audiobooks in one go. Chapter
support is pretty important for users to skip through chapters. I would
find it irritating if I have to seek through to the location I want to be
on every time. Since, Amarok already provides a bookmark to the location
where the user left off, addition of chapter markers would make navigating
an audiobook as easy as a book.

CUE sheeted music, on the other hand, is very popular, and not providing
proper support ruins the music experience people would have. It is also
been a requested feature for quite a long time (5). Many bugs have been
reported (6) complaining about Amarok’s lack of support for CUE sheeted
music. Implementation of support has been pushed over releases (from 2.6 to
2.8) and I think that this should end with the google summer of code.

Goals:

The goals of my project would be to

1) Implement Qtchapter support in TagLib

2) Display these chapters in Amarok

3) Integrate CUE sheet support with collection manager and Amarok for a
seamless music experience.

4) (Optional) Implement embedded CUE sheet support

5) Implement support for NeroChapter type in TagLib

6) Solve bugs related to my project along the way (7).

Implementation Details:

The project involves making changes in both TagLib and Amarok repositories.
I would like to divide the project into 3 parts.

The first one being implementing the QtChapter (QuickTime) support in
MP4/M4A/M4B files. As per the apple docs(1), the Qt chapter support can be
achieved by reading the “trak” atom which contains the “chap” data. This
trak atom contains the text track which contains the chapter information.
The indicated text track should contain a “stbl” atom ( basically a table )
which would contain offsets to the location in the file that contain
chapter title in the file. Reading data at these offsets give information
about chapter titles. The time at which each each chapter marker occurs can
be easily calculated using the “bitrate” of the audiofile. These would be
the changes that I would make in TagLib to support QtChapters. The changes
in Amarok include, displaying the chapter markers to the user in the form
of bookmarks or Multi-Tracks.I plan on reading the chapter information in
Amarok the same way I implemented it in the bug fix (2). For actually
showing them on Amarok I’ll use the BookmarkGroupPtr to create a new
bookmark group and add chapter pointers to it in the form of URLs. I would
like to also store the chapter information in the database as well.

The second part of the project would be to implement complete CUE sheet
support.

What a CUE sheet is?

CUE sheet contains information related to the album and the main filename
and the time offsets at which each track occurs.

What needs to be done?

I propose to make this change in the KUrl. Parts of the Url would have data
about the Base File, Time-Offset and Duration of the track (after a “?” or
“#” at the end, if not possible a new protocol?). Then these URL’s would be
interpreted in the UmsCollection or SqlCollection classes as separate Track
files. This would also enable storing the details of each song in the
database, hence there is no need to access the CUE file every time.

Amarok already has a basic CUE sheet support, it can read CUE sheets  added
manually through the browser or from a cd. I would like to integrate this
with the CollectionScanner perfectly( the way it is supposed to work,
highlighted by popular bug: (4) ). The scanner will automatically recognize
these CUE files and record them as separate tracks in the database as
mentioned above. I would like to store any changed metadata of a specific
file in the KUrl. If time permits, I plan on implementing embedded CUE
sheet support in Amarok.

The third and last part of the project would be to implement support for
the NeroChapter type in MP4. Since, this is not so popular, I would like to
keep this my last part of the project. This involves more changes in TagLib
than Amarok. The chapter track information is found under the “udta” atom.
This part of the project would be to automatically detect the type of
chapter present in the given file and decode the chapter data and provide
it neatly.

Tentative Timeline:

June

< GSOC begins >

week 4: Community Bonding Period - Ask for improvement suggestions and get
to know the Amarok community.

July-

week 1: Create Abstract Classes in TagLib for MP4 chapter support. Start
implementing QtChapter Support.

week 2: Finish implementing QtChapter Support in TagLib.

week 3: Design UI in Amarok to display the chapter markers.

week 4: Modify the database and store the chapter data in it.

< Mid-term  - Complete QtChapter support in Amarok>

August-

week 1: Integrate CUE sheet reading with the scanner and automatically
detect that these are separate track files and add them to the collection.

weeks 2 and 3: Implement changes in KUrl. Make modifications in
SqlCollection and other methods and classes that use url(TrackPtr ,
playback and other controllers).

week 4: Make modifications in UmsCollection to support CUE sheets as well.

September-

week 1: Implement modules that allow the user to change the metadata of
CUE-sheeted tracks. I do not plan on making these changes in the CUE sheet
instead store them locally/in the url so that amarok can display them

week 2: Finish CUE sheet support in Amarok.

week 3: Implement NeroChapter support in TagLib.

< pens down >

week 4: Testing and resolving any bugs. Documentation.


Do you have other obligations from late May to early August (school, work,
vacation, etc.)?

No obligations. I am willing to work 50 hours a week,  7-8 hours everyday,
maybe more during the weekends. I would like to take sundays off just to
relax myself :) (Unless I’m lagging behind). College starts early august
but should not be a problem because it is early in the semester and they
wouldn’t mind me taking a week or 2 off.

About Me:

I am a Student of SSN College of Engineering. I prefer coding in
C/C++/Python. I was introduced to Amarok when my friend suggested it after
looking at my android app Lyricize (3). Since then I have fallen in love
with it. I would love to make any contribution that makes music more
enjoyable. I am also an enthusiastic web and android developer. I am a very
big FLOSS fan. I have written scripts that predict and scrape the indian
stock market data and avails it to developers as an API as well as
contributions to Haiku OS.

Introduced to C and C++ by my mother at the age of 8, I have continued to
work on various projects during school and college to sharpen my skills. I
have learnt to code in languages such as java,php,ruby,node(javascript),
etc. I have won hackathons conducted by KRDS, Mozilla. Also, A finalist at
the Yahoo open hack 2012. I try to contribute to open source as much as I
can ( github: https://github.com/abhiin1947/ ).

Am I comfortable working independently under a mentor or supervisor?

Yes. I have been an intern for the ULaw Software Foundation based in Canada
and time zones aren’t really a problem at all.

After GSoC:

After GSoC I plan on continuing to fix bugs and code more features for
Amarok and taglib. I intend to learn about more file formats and improving
support in those areas.

My experience with Amarok:

I started out my Amarok journey by trying to solve bug 240409 ( which turns
out to be a big part of my proposal ). It was initially marked as a junior
job. I tried to implement chapter detection using library mp4v2 ( patch:
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/109079/ ) which was eventually rejected.
After research and learning, I implemented support for chapter detection in
Amarok by using mp4atom.h from taglib explicitly ( patch:
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/109256/ ). Since then, Unfortunately,
exams started and I couldn’t find the time to work more on it.

My Bug fixes include https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/110243/ ,
https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/110150/ . Both of them are relatively new
and pending.

External Links:

(1) -
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/QuickTime/qtff/QTFFChap2/qtff2.html

(2) - https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/109256/

(3) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.festalize.LyricMatch

(4) - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187587

(5) - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187587 reported 2009

(6) - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187587 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286089 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=294136 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270003 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=279234 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=230272

(7) - https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=240409 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=187587 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=286089 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=270003 ,
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=294136


*


On Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 5:44 PM, Matěj Laitl <matej at laitl.cz> wrote:

> On 28. 4. 2013 Abhinandan Ramprasath wrote:
> > I hope I'm not too late with this.
>
> Not strictly late, but we cannot reply within hours, so you may have little
> time to process the feedback.
>
> > Also, I don't have many bug fixes to show for, I can see my chances of
> > getting in are greatly hindered by it. would any bug fix in the final
> few days
> > make a change?
>
> Every bugfix counts - we need to know that students are capable of
> patching,
> building, reading code, respecting style etc.
>
> > Implementing Unified CUE sheet and chapter support in Amarok
> >
> > Implementation Details:
>
> You lack 2 very important parts:
>  * Motivation (what the current problem is? why it needs to be fixed?)
>  * Project Goal (what are the deliverables you want to provide? By what
> criteria we should judge whether your project is finished?)
>
> > The project involves making changes in both TagLib and amarok
> repositories.
> > I would like to divide the project into 3 parts.
> >
> > The first one being implementing the QtChapter support in MP4/M4A/M4B
> > files.
>
> Are you sure that this is the format used in audiobooks? The link refers to
> movies mostly. Also please clarify that Qt is quicktime here (better not
> shorten it), not Qt library.
>
> > As per the apple docs(1) the Qt chapter support can be achieved by
> > reading the “trak” atom which contains the “chap” data. This trak atom
> > contains the text track which contains the chapter information. The
> > indicated text track should contain a “stbl” atom ( basically a table )
> > which would contain offsets to the location in the file that contain
> > chapter title in the file. Reading data at these offsets give information
> > about chapter titles. The time at which each each chapter marker occurs
> to
> > can be easily calculated using the “bitrate” of the audiofile. These
> would
> > be the changes that I would make in TagLib to support QtChapters. The
> > changes in amarok include, displaying the chapter markers to the user in
> > the form of bookmarks or Multi-Tracks.
>
> This needs to be sorted out, I think we would prefer MultiTracks.
>
> > I plan on reading the chapter
> > information in amarok the same way I implemented it in the bug fix (2). I
> > would like to also store the chapter information in the database as well.
>
> Yes, that will be needed.
>
> > The second part of the project would be to implement Unified CUE sheet
> > support.
>
> Well, the "unified" was for chapter + cue and doesn't have sense alone.
>
> > The CUE sheet implementation is quite straightforward. CUE sheet
> > contains information related to the album and the main filename and the
> > time offsets at which each track occurs . The challenging part would be
> to
> > implement this support in the database. I propose to make this change in
> > the KUrl. Parts of the Url would have data about the BaseFile,
> Time-Offset
> > and Duration of the track (after a “?” or “#” at the end, if not
> possible a
> > new protocol?). This must be done without affecting the rest of the
> working
> > of the app. Then these URL’s would be interpreted in the UmsCollection or
> > SqlCollection classes as separate Track files. This would also enable
> > storing the details of each song in the database, hence there is no need
> to
> > access the cue file everytime.
>
> Yeah, this makes sense. You'll also need to handle metadata changes - I
> guess
> changing the title would be very different from changing the album.
>
> Are you aware that Amarok already has limited support for cue files?
>
> > The third and last part of the project would be to implement support for
> > the NeroChapter type in MP4. Since, this is not so popular, I would like
> to
> > keep this my last part of the project. This involves more changes in
> TagLib
> > than amarok. The chapter track information is found under the “udta”
> atom.
> > This part of the project would be to automatically detect the type of
> > chapter present in the given file and decode the chapter data and provide
> > it neatly.
>
> Makes sense, also it makes sense to keep this low-priority.
>
> > Tentative Timeline:
> >
> > June
> >
> > < GSOC begins >
> >
> > week 4: Community Bonding Period - Ask for improvement suggestions and
> get
> > to know the amarok community.
> >
> > July-
> >
> > week 1: Create Abstract Classes in TagLib for MP4 chapter support. Start
> > implementing QtChapter Support.
> >
> > week 2: Finish implementing QtChapter Support in TagLib.
> >
> > week 3: Design UI in amarok to display the chapter markers.
>
> I don't there's a need for new UI, perhaps just some small tweaks. You also
> don't mention it in the implementation details.
>
> > week 4: Modify the database and store the chapter data in it.
> >
> > < Mid-term  - Complete QtChapter support in amarok>
> >
> > August-
> >
> > week 1: Create abstract classes for cue file support in amarok.
>
> Well, some of them are already there, this sounds like you're unaware of
> it.
>
> > week 2: Detect and decode cue file and store the information in the
> classes.
>
> Should be already done.
>
> > week 3: Implement changes in Kurl.
> >
> > week 4: Make modifications in SqlCollection and other methods and classes
> > that use url(TrackPtr).
> >
> > September-
> >
> > week 1: Make modifications in UmsCollection to support cue sheets as
> well.
> >
> > week 2: Finish cue sheet support in amarok.
> >
> > week 3: Implement NeroChapter support in TagLib.
> >
> > < pens down >
> >
> > week 4: Testing and resolving any bugs. Documentation.
>
> If the documentation stands for documenting public classes and methods,
> then
> don't do it in batch in the last week. Do it right when you
> introduce/change a
> class/method!
>
> > Do you have other obligations from late May to early August (school,
> work,
> > vacation, etc.)?
> >
> > No obligations. I am willing to work 50 hours a week,  7-8 hours
> everyday,
> > maybe more during the weekends.
>
> Have some rest, too! :-) Relaxed developers produce better code. ;-)
>
> > College starts early august but should not
> > be a problem. I will still be able to put in 50 hours a week by working a
> > little extra in the weekends.
>
> Hmm, this is a bit early. Are you going to have regular courses from early
> August?
>
> > About Me:
> >
> > I am a Student of SSN College of Engineering. I prefer coding in
> > C/C++/Python. I was introduced to amarok when my friend suggested it
> after
> > looking at my android app Lyricize (3). Since then I have fallen in love
> > with it. I would love to make any contribution that makes music more
> > enjoyable. I am also an enthusiastic web and android developer. I am a
> very
> > big FLOSS fan. I have written scripts that predict and scrape the indian
> > stock market data and avails it to developers as an API as well as
> > contributions to Haiku OS.
>
> Have you worked with any VCS systems, e.g. git?
>
> Some experience with Qt (the library)/kdelibs?
>
> > Am I comfortable working independently under a mentor or supervisor?
> >
> > Yes. I have been an intern for the ULaw Software Foundation based in
> canada
> > and timezones isn’t really a problem at all.
>
> "aren't"
>
> > After GSoC:
> >
> > After GSoC I plan on continuing to fix bugs and code more features for
> > amarok and taglib. I intend to learn about more file formats and
> improving
> > support in those areas.
>
> Otherwise this doesn't look bad, but as mentioned above, 2 mandatory
> sections
> and more research of existing functionality (and code) is needed so that
> the
> proposal doesn't look uninformed.
>
> Cheers,
>                 Matěj
>
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