Need general WMP control speed/frame/scrub etc.

R

Raycaster

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2005
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I'm an intermediate programmer at best having used most languages but master of none. I usually turn to vba when I want to write something as I its the easiest and basically handles what I need.

I coach a local HS volleyball team and would like to easily edit game video.

There are several high end packages available but the cost is prohibitive for the volunteer hobby.

Most packages handle the game breakdown in 3 steps:

1) Cut game video into game points. End up with 200 small clips.
2) Each clip is analyzed and each clip has a info file containing play facts (lost/won/rotation/error/player touch - 50 details)
3) A final Query screen where the end user filters what they want to see eg, All clips of won points by rotation 3...

I dusted off vba and quickly had WMP and VLC| controlled within VBA. The other features are basic a ton of buttons to set attributes and build text files to query etc. I'm thinking of not creating all the small clips and just using something like a "Play EDL" .

Its all like a simple custom database which doesn't seem to tough.

My question is to the TRUE programmers, will vba be my best choice or should I use another language?

Also, although playing back video was easy enough I started looking into speed control and a possible "scrub" wheel. Is there a "toolkit" for WMP that would make these features easily programmable or do I need to just dig deep into the docs?

Thanks ahead.
 
Some of what you're asking can be accomplished with what you have. Pick a seek position and duration, and store some metadata about the section. Then you can query the stored metadata, and selecting a chunk will playback the large video clip from the seek-to section and playing for a specified duration. Some of this may require some timers and events, but is doable.

If you're wanting to get into fragmenting and splitting a clip into individual files, then look into FFMpeg. You can either shell out some commands to handle the splitting of video files, or use some wrapper APIs. Then your metadata would be associated with a specific file, instead of a seek-to position in the large captured video file.

I'm still unsure which path to send you down, because it sounds like what you've built accomplishes your current needs. I am curious about some of your playback controls in VBA, so I would appreciate seeing a snippet of your implementation.
 
Thank you for the replies guys.

The last week or so I have been doing something I never do, think out the gui and program flow ahead of time. I'm leaning on chopping up the game video into snipits. FFMpeg probably will be my best friend for splicing and also possible text overlay. Pretty sure I can handle the code but figuring out a smooth quick workflow with room to fix user errors is tougher than I thought originally. No one want to spend an hours editing scenes without being able to GOBACK or edit scene markers. I will post screenshots within a month, want a decent gui not a plain visual studio front.
 
I will be using Visual Basic within Visual Studio 2015 so I assume vb.net.
Just an old guy trying to code a basic app the would take real programmers their lunch time probably.
I sure miss the easy days looking like a rock star writing basic on the Commodore PETs in high school...
 
woah.. woah.. woah.. Yeah, VB.NET is most definitely not VBA.. VBA is what you would find floating around behind the scenes on Excel.
 
Ugly_GUI.jpg


OK, Started with the metro gui style, then went custom, will go back to plain jane windows design.

This is just a gui strung together in Visual studio with only the wmp function working.
Just filled the listbox with a textfile for effect...

All the icons will be ripped out for simple text buttons providing more real estate where needed.
Also have to frame info and hopefully a scrub wheel...
 
screenshot2.jpg


Cleaned it up a bit and went back to the standard wmp controls. My eyes aren't hurting as much.
Icon or design guys can feel free to pm me...
 
Thanks for the progress update. I'm interested in hearing how this progresses, and any decision points you hit along the way.
 
Thank you for the reply, here are some steps taken:

Loved the idea of a "Metro Style Gui" but being an non-artist the color tiles looked brutal and gave it a cartoon/baby look..
Converted icons to B/W and used my own design for WMP VCR controls but again looked too big and like crap.
The last screenshot above shows the direction I was going with smaller and less icons and turfed the rabbit and turtle icons.
The icon placement at the botton still isn't right as the 3 film strip icons signify different forms splice/meta-edit/query and build video from clip.
The first 5 icons belong at the top of the video (load project/video etc.)
Will use menus to clear up real estate. (config cut button to spacebar eg.) I do like the 2 icons below the clip list window (Delete clip - Finalize video).


screenshot5.jpg
 
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Ok, the slicing ability (Markers) are working and proper info is sent to the listbox.
Widened screen for listbox.
Will get delete clip marker going next with loading and saving project.

BTW, I hope most people viewing these posts realize that I AM NOT a programmer! I'm googling as I'm going and editing canned code basically.
I will be asking for help at some time for sure but google is my programming partner so far...

screenshot8.jpg
 
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Sounds like you're enjoying the progress you're making. It's certainly more fun to dive into a coding project when it is a subject matter you are interested in!

Raycaster said:
I will be asking for help at some time for sure but google is my programming partner so far...
Click to expand...
I would suggest getting some periodic peer reviews of code. Sharing the codebase using a code repo like Github is one approach. Alternatively, you you could post a sufficiently large snippet; something that demonstrates:
- Consistently used patterns or styles
- Complex object usage (such as the WMP or VLC control)
- Code blocks that work but don't smell quite right to you

Ideally, if you receive some guidance or suggestions that you want to move forward with now, you'll have less refactoring to do than if wait until the very end.
 
Thank you for the suggestions of peer review. I may look in to that but I really don't see any real tough code needed for the project.
I'm slowly trying to tighten up the style consistency for sure, never realized I'd spend more time in PS than VS.
Going to switch all icons to the open/close icon style of the first 2.


I'm in the process of switching the listbox out for a datagridview for more control and better look.

Its a great learning project and posting on here kinda keeps me motivated...

screen12.png
 
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Sorry went to change last screenshot and changed 2...

OK, last night I had this idea that I'm tinkering with.

What about having 15 buttons across the bottom with head shots of the players? This doesn't make much sense on the first screen but for the second and 3rd maybe.
The first screen will allow the user to place the players images in if wanted.

The 2nd form will be when each clip created with this 1st form (script generated for ffmpeg) needs to be edited with stats.
So I replace the DataGridView with a drag and drop edition allowing the editor to drag the players buttons into the stat columns.
eg. The clip is looping while I drag and drop a player that served into the "Serve column", drag and drop the player that sets the ball into a "set column", and so on.
 
So if I'm understanding this correctly... Each clip represents a "play" or section of the game, and you'd associate players to the game section. You could then associate the players in order of appearance or effect in the clip, to specific defined actions (block, set, spike, etc.), and so on. That all sounds reasonable, and pushes the application from just editing/splitting video files to being a sports data- or stat-driven application that is supplemented with video clips. This would also be another moment to revisit your mockup and design process that you did earlier.
 
Yes, the application will have 3 parts
1) First screen shown so far makes the user chop the game up into points.
2) The second part (icon with pencil) will change form to add volleyball meta to each clip
3) The third part (icon with cd-case) will allow users to multiple query for clips. eg. points won + rotation 3 + service + pass by #4 + set 3. The application would then rebuild clips with those queries.

There are close to 50 meta tags that can be applied to a clip.

I appreciate the replies as most people don't follow competitive volleyball. The professional apps usually run in the $5000 per year area and companies will prepare your game video for $50 up per game.
Since my teams budget is $5000 less than the yearly license I thought I'd give it a shot.

University or professional teams generally use Dartfish, DataVolley or VidSwap.
 
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No screen shots for a few days.

Putting in time looking into datasets and sql stuff etc.
Started on Load/Save/New project subs but looking into templates to speed things up.
Time to pay the price for quick google tutorials...
Might switch the hard drive icons to file icons to match the "film strip" icons style more..
 
Flip flopping between SQLite and just xml from datasets...
Playing with icons while head rests from SQLite stuff.
screen13.jpg
 
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