[Delta] Psi/Jabber/Helix Status

Wed Sep 8 01:36:38 PDT 2004

Hi, is the 
integration with a Helix a step to have voice chat with PSI ?

TIA

Justin Karneges wrote:

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>Hello everyone,
>
>I've finally moved most of my Helix code into the Psi CVS.  It is incomplete, 
>but from this point on it will be publically available.  The only part I 
>haven't yet committed is the RTSP handshaking code for Iris.  I'll commit it 
>when I'm sure it won't break Psi CVS. :)
>
>There are two major parts to this project:
>  - Media I/O
>  - Bridging over Jabber.
>
>The latter is actually the more difficult component, which is what I have 
>spent most of my time with, so I'll talk about it first.  I've designed a 
>specification for routing RTSP over Jabber, which is available in the form of 
>two JEPs (jep-rtsp and jep-media) at the Delta website.  They depend on an 
>update to JEP-0065 that I also wrote, which allows the routing of UDP packets 
>between Jabber endpoints (this spec update can be found in the jabber.org CVS 
>for -65, but has not yet been published).  Codewise, Iris JEP-65 now has UDP 
>support, and cutestuff/rtsp contains the tunnelling proxy code.  Basically, 
>this tunnels RTSP over JEP-65, which is absolutely necessary in the world of 
>NAT that we live in.
>
>For media input/output, the Helix SDK is used.  Helix is relatively easy to 
>work with, and the only snags involve the binary-only files (well, and a 
>major SDK oversight regarding the server, see below).  I've abstracted the 
>Helix library into a very simple Qt-based media API.  Video is played onto a 
>QWidget.  All of this is wrapped up as a plugin, meaning that there is no 
>direct dependency on Helix to compile or run a program that uses the media 
>API.  The rationale for this is to allow Psi to be distributed without Helix 
>support and have it easily added at a later time.  The media code is found in 
>a new top-level CVS module, 'media', and the 'helix' subdirectory contains 
>the plugin that actually links to the Helix SDK.
>
>For the adventurous of you out there, you might want to toy with testplay.  
>Testplay is a super simple media player in ~150 lines of code.  It seems 
>everyone and their dog has a media player now. :)  So far I've only tried it 
>on X11, but the code _should_ be portable to Windows and Mac.
>
>First step is to read the Helix website and learn how to build splay from the 
>Helix CVS using ribosome.  This should cause all of the needed libraries to 
>be built also, and then you just point some paths to the splay build 
>directory.  See media/README for details.
>
>Binary-only snags:
>  - Some Helix files are not open source.  Most of these we don't need for our 
>project anyway, although I've recently discovered that the audio/video 
>capture driver is closed source and the binary-released version is 
>incompatible with the latest CVS code.
>  - To play the Tori Amos video that testplay refers to, you'll need the 
>RealVideo codec.  To get access to this, you probably have to register with 
>some webforms on the Helix website.
>
>What remains to be done:
>  - Finish jep-rtsp and jep-media in Iris.
>  - Get a working and legally usable capture driver.
>  - Finish producer (read: media input) integration.  I've only basically 
>started this, as without capture I couldn't get very far.
>  - Serve media.  It's kinda sad that I don't have this yet, as it is really 
>important.  However, I'm not yet sure how to approach the task as there 
>doesn't appear to be a server SDK at all.  I've asked about this on the helix 
>lists several times already.  Maybe I have to fork the Helix Server project.  
>We could be in over our heads here.
>  - Psi GUI (I'm the least worried about this, it's a 1-2 day thing, I'll just 
>steal from the File Transfer stuff).
>
>The short story: lots of work done, but not quite there yet.  When will this 
>be complete?  Hard to say.  Finishing within the month of September could be 
>realistic, provided that there are easy answers to the pending 
>producer/server issues.
>
>- -Justin
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