GoSoC 2009 UPnP Proposal -first draft

[Bart Cerneels]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 10:40 PM, Jeff Balinsky <jebsky at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello again
>
> This is a draft of a gosoc project proposal that i am posting for feedback.
>
> I have never written anything like this and was semi-unsure when I was
> writing. So there is frequent use of subjective language that I will later
> (hopefully) remove.
>
> It also could be more formally written.
>
> all feedback welcome.
>
> Jeff
>
> Amarok UPnP support
>
> Jeff Balinsky
>
> Summary
>
> Many modern home entertainment devices (most notably the Xbox 360 and PS3)
> have the ability to play content of of UPnP shares. In the public domain
> there are several backends allowing a user to set up a mediaserver on their
> linux pc (coherence, ushare) and others allowing the browsing of and
> rendering of those shares(coherence, djmount).
>
> Primarily, I will add the ability to use amarok to share music in the amarok
> library as an UPnP share creating a UPnP MediaServer DCP . A main goal while
> doing this will be making configuration as easy as possible.
>
> Secondarily, I will add the ability to use amarok as an UPnP MediaServer
> ControlPoint which would allow the playing of media off other shares.
>
> Details
>
> In my experience on the user end using UPnP and linux (I have used ushare to
> share movies to my Xbox 360) things are not seamless. There is no graphical
> way to configure ushare just a .conf. When something in the filesystem
> changes (say I add a movie) I must manually restart the server. Wifi is also
> hit or miss. I will aim to address all of these issues.
>
> As far as amarok is concerned one of the biggest issues with sharing
> collections will be unsupported files. If I try to share music with ushare
> between unsupported files and weird meta tags it renders the graphical
> browsing on my 360 useless. This can be addressed by incorporating the
> ability to only share a subset of the amarok collection via UPnP. A possible
> preexisting framework for this would be to use a playlist for the shared
> media. Another possibility would be to have preset filters for popular
> devices.
>
> Djmount discovers automatically all UPnP AV Media Servers a network and
> makes the content available in a directory tree. A backend such as this
> could be used to allow amarok to browse and play media off of other servers.
> Servers may be able to be browsed right under the local collection in the
> collection browser.
>
> Implementation?
>
> My guess is that I would implement this as two scripts. This is unless this
> is better implemented in the main options dialog
>
> Fuzzy Work Timeline
>
> GoSoC Has two evaluation deadlines midterm in early July and final in late
> August thus I split this in two parts
>
> First Part – Make it work
>
> Functionality – get to the point where amarok can share and play UPnP
>
> Second Part
>
> Creme Filling – This is where things get pretty. Make it so a 4th grader can
> configure with a easy gui. Add fun features(subsets etc, automatic port
> forwarding if necessary). While I am in there so to speak it may be easy to
> use the same server to add simple directory based sharing of other *gasp*
> non audio sharing.
>
> Qualifications
>
> In the fall of '09 I will be a senior CS major at Hood College
> (http://cs.hood.edu). I have been programming for about 5 years through high
> school and college. I am currently using Qt and C++ and am comfortable with
> both. The idea of using kdelibs doesn't particularly bother me. I consider
> myself functionally knowledgeable in networking and data com theory. I want
> to do more network type programming.
>
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