GSoC Proposal : Video-clip applet in Amarok 2.X context-view

[Mark Kretschmann]

2009/3/23 Simon ESNEAULT <simon.esneault at gmail.com>:
> Hi all,
>
> Here is a very first draft for a GSoC proposal, what do you think about it ?
>
> //--------------------------------------------------------------------------\\
>
> Summary :
> Amarok 2.0 is a powerful music media player, and the new Internet service
> framework allows a very good integration with related website such as
> last.fm, magnatune, jamendo, etc ...
> But it lacks integration with website who provide video-clip (youtube,
> dailymotion, myspace tv, etc). Especially, it would be nice to visualize the
> video clip streaming of the current track directly in a context view applet,
> and to have some basic integration (view comment, rate, etc ...) with at
> least youtube.com services.
>
> Project :
> 3 main point for this project :
> - Create a plasma video player applet which can play video stream. A video
> widget can be integrated in a graphic scene (canvas, base of amarok context
> view) by sub classing a QGraphicProxyWidget. Some test are needed though.
> - Create a Data Engine which retrieve videos streaming URL from the
> different website and order them relevantly (name correspondence, but also
> popularity, rating, etc.) Plasma data engine allows us to retrieve
> dynamically informations from websites, and then to easily use them in an
> amarok context view applet
> - Create the GUI and the final applet with the video player, links to the
> original page, preview of the other videos, comment and rate if available
>
> Projected Time line :
> Study Period:
> 4/15 - 5/14: Continue to read code and playground
>
> Work Period:
> 5/15 - 6/14: Revamp the old video applet and make it work with flash video
> stream
> 6/15 - 7/14: Build the Data Engine and use statistics or something to order
> video clip
> 7/15 - 8/15: Build the GUI
> 8/15 – 9/01: Clean, document, test code
> Background:
>
> I'm a PhD student in medical image processing in Rennes, France. I'm a
> fervent user of KDE and Amarok since 3 year now, and have helped for some
> bug and committed some patch for amarok. I'm familiar with Qt, plasma and
> amarok code since 1 year now, and daily work on a C++ for a medical imaging
> project.
> Also a very big fan of music, I don't like to fire-up an internet browser
> just to see what does the video-clip of my favorite songs look like, i think
> it would be easier if everything is integrated, and this will surely make
> amarok even better.
>
>
> Until may 15, I'll be and assistant professor in computer science so can
> dedicate time only to
> planning and playground a little, but after that I am free to work 10 to 20
> hours per week on
> Amarok. As for mentoring, I'm used to work with e-mail and chat.

The idea is nice, but it seems to me that the scope of this proposal
could be too small for a SoC project. Seeing that there already exists
a video applet for Plasma now, it seems possible to do this in just a
few weeks.

I may be underestimating the effort it would take to do this, but this
is my first impression. What do others think?

-- 
Mark Kretschmann
Amarok Developer
www.kde.org - amarok.kde.org