Gnome Mplayer Status

I've been working the last week to convert gnome-mplayer to use my gmtk_media_player widget backend. So far really good progress has been made and things are shaping up nicely. Found a few problems here and there vs the code I built to do the initial testing of gmtk_media_player before I converted to it, but that was pretty much expected.

The good news is that performance and memory usage seem to be about the same so far. Also, I'm really liking the event based structure of the code. It is much clearer what is going on with mplayer now to the main code.

gnome-mplayer, 1.0.4beta, GTK3

I have an idea of how to get zooming to work, but it might require clutter to do it. I'm thinking of embedding gmtk_media_player into a clutter actor and then taking advantage of the capabilities of clutter. I did this in fosfor about 6 months or more ago, and I noticed that totem recently started using clutter as well for the same purpose.

Gnome Mplayer ported to GTK3

While there are still some major issues with the application, gnome-mplayer does compile against GTK3 now. I'll probably have to spend a few days figuring out all the new tweaks that I need to make.

gnome-mplayer using GTK3

This is SVN r2002

ANNOUNCE: 1.0.3 of gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer released

gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.3 have been released you can download them from here

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/downloads/detail?name=gnome-mplayer-1.0.3.tar.gz


http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/downloads/detail?name=gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.3.tar.gz

Please note that these versions will use gsettings on glib 2.26 or higher which may cause all the configuration of these tools to be reset, you can force gconf with --with-gconf=yes and this is required for both applications.

If firefox crashes after installing gecko-mediaplayer, the most likely cause is gecko-mediaplayer using gsettings and gnome-mplayer is not. Please ensure that both are configured and installed properly.

gnome-mplayer changelog

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/source/browse/tags/v1.0.3/ChangeLog

gecko-mediaplayer changelog

http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/source/browse/tags/v1.0.3/ChangeLog

GMTK Ported to GTK3

As part of the next release I wanted to be able to have gnome-mplayer be able to be compiled against GTK3. Since GMTK is the core of the next release, I needed to port it first. It only took about an hour to complete the work. gnome-mplayer will take more time to convert, but it should be something I should be able to do in a few hours.

GTMK running under GTK3

So I need to finalize 1.0.3 and then on to this work. It appears that GTK3 may not be able to be ported to Windows, because of the embedding in GTK3 being X specific.

Avant Window Navigator vs Gnome Shell Dock

The other day I wrote up how I liked the Gnome Shell Dock but it still left a little to be desired. Additionally, I was missing the weather app and some other functionality. So I installed the Avant Window Navigator and the AWN Extras package.

AWN with some minor customization

I found that this dock gives a little more flexibility. I particularly like the Simple Switcher and the Weather Applet. The Simple Switcher gives me the ability to flip between workspaces with just my mouse, something that I found missing in the Dock.

Gnome Shell Dock Extension

With Gnome Shell, I was feeling that I was going to the Activities menu quite a bit to switch tasks. The constant movement of the mouse from left to right was a little annoying.

I then found the Dock extension (RPM name is: gnome-shell-extensions-dock). And that actually seemed to make the shell much more enjoyable.

The dock is on the right of the screen

Clicking on the icons activated tasks that were active and I could start a new task by middle clicking on the icon, which is helpful for multiple terminals. I really recommend this extension.

Update: I have found that I prefer the Avant Window Navigator over the Dock Extension.. see this post 

Fedora 15 Bluetooth

After I upgraded from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 I found that Gnome was not showing my bluetooth devices and in fact it didn't detect any. However, lsusb found them with no problems.

I found bug #695588 at RedHat and it looked like systemctl may have not started it.

#systemctl status bluetooth.service
bluetooth.service - Bluetooth Manager
      Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service)
      Active: inactive (dead)
      CGroup: name=systemd:/system/bluetooth.service

#systemctl enable bluetooth.service
ln -s '/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service' '/etc/systemd/system/dbus-org.bluez.service'
ln -s '/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service' '/etc/systemd/system/bluetooth.target.wants/bluetooth.service'

#systemctl start bluetooth.service

After running those three commands, gnome now shows my devices.

Bluetooth devices

 

Fedora 15 PreUpgrade

Well, I wanted to upgrade my primary machine to Fedora 15, so that I could starting working on making gnome-mplayer work with GTK3. It didn't go so well. I ran the preupgrade tool to go to the beta, and after a long download and a reboot, I ended up with a machine in limbo between Fedora 14 and Fedora 15. I think I am going to be able to recover from it without a reinstall, but so far I got kind of a mess.

Update:

I was able to recover from it, package-cleanup --cleandups and then reinstalling the kernel got me back.

Had some trouble with clutter, I had to remove some self installed source code, so did that one to myself.

Anyway, it is up and running now.

Gnome Mplayer 1.0.3 beta has been released

Gnome MPlayer and gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.3betas have been released

Mainly changes to use GSettings over GConf when possible. Also, support for Apple.com sites in Firefox 4.

Tar Files:

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/downloads/detail?name=gnome-mplayer-1.0.3beta.tar.gz

http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/downloads/detail?name=gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.3beta.tar.gz

GMTK Media Player Zoom Feature

One feature I'm commonly asked for in Gnome MPlayer is a way to zoom in on the video, perhaps there is something needs closer examination or the viewer just wants to get rid of the black bars on the sides. So I began looking into how I could solve this problem. GMTK draws the video into a GTKSocket object, which is contained by a GTKFixed container. This allows me to properly center the video. I was under the assumption that using negative coordinates in the GTKFixed would not be allowed. Anyway I decided to try it to see if it would work just in case. And it actually did work with no problem. So my first attempt at this was to put the change into Gnome MPlayer. Gnome MPlayer uses a GTKDrawingArea instead of a GTKSocket so when I tried this technique I ended up with video overlaying other portions of the window, not good. But I figured I should try it in GMTK to see if it would work there anyway. It does actually work pretty well. So when Gnome MPlayer is converted to use GMTK (planned for 1.0.4) the zoom feature should come along with the code. Below are some screen shots showing it working.

GMTK at 100% zoom (I've made the window wider on purpose)

GMTK at 120% zoom

GMTK at 80% zoom

I may change the step size in the future to allow for more precise zooming, right now the steps are 10%.


Update: Looks like this feature will probably be dropped for gnome-mplayer 1.0.4, I had to make a change to the layout code to make GTK3 work correctly, and that change took away this feature.