Playing Video
Author
We are creating a Serious Game. For our game we need to play video. The playing of videos will not necessarily be in-game; it will be a separate plug-in of the application. Our "game" is run in windowed mode with different plug-in windows docked around it and one of the plug-ins will need to be a video player. Lots of the video playing and initiating of a video will need to be controlled with code and not necessarily by the user/player via video controls. For example, when the player does something within the game, a specific video will start playing in the video plug-in.
We are thinking of using Bink to implement the playing back of videos and controlling the playback.
Is this a good choice for what we are trying to do?
Is it overkill to use Bink for an implementation as this or should we use some other video player type API?
EDIT: lets say we leave cost out of the equation for now.
Bink should be ok for what you need. It's a simple to use and fast API that also works across platforms if you need it.
Their examples should help you test it within just a couple of hours. So even if you don't like it and choose to use something else it's worth that much time to find out.
Andy
Their examples should help you test it within just a couple of hours. So even if you don't like it and choose to use something else it's worth that much time to find out.
Andy
Author
Quote:Original post by NineYearCycle
Their examples should help you test it within just a couple of hours.
I got one of their examples up and running and it looks like it would be a nice API to work with.
EDIT: What about APIs like; Win32 AVIFile API and DirectShow, why not use them instead of Bink? But are they better than Bink?
[Edited by - G-Man9566 on February 23, 2010 7:07:28 AM]
Sure you can use them, and they're free. They'll play back more formats. You have to convert video into Binks own format whereas with DirectShow/AVIfile you do need to have the codec installed.
It depends what you want. You pay for Bink but it's simple to use, has low decompression overhead (fast) and portable. Personally I've found the Win32 AVIfile stuff to be a complete load of crap, but at least it's free.
This is a pretty minor choice, it's just video and you can use one of MANY different solutions.
What are you're criteria for choosing your video playback system?
Andy
It depends what you want. You pay for Bink but it's simple to use, has low decompression overhead (fast) and portable. Personally I've found the Win32 AVIfile stuff to be a complete load of crap, but at least it's free.
This is a pretty minor choice, it's just video and you can use one of MANY different solutions.
What are you're criteria for choosing your video playback system?
Andy
Author
Quote:Original post by NineYearCycle
What are you're criteria for choosing your video playback system?
Well...
- fast playback (no lagging or the smallest chance of lagging)
- Best utilization of processing power, multi-threading and GPU rendering (preferably).
- Low memory usage.
Well Bink will certainly meet all of those criteria.
Otherwise you could look into embedding an open source media player? But that's overkill if you just want video playback.
Since you're already aware of the AVIFile API why not just try implementing that too? I'm sure you can find some example or tutorial code:
eg: Working with AVI files
Andy
Otherwise you could look into embedding an open source media player? But that's overkill if you just want video playback.
Since you're already aware of the AVIFile API why not just try implementing that too? I'm sure you can find some example or tutorial code:
eg: Working with AVI files
Andy
Author
Great. Thanks alot. We've decided we are gonna implement both for testing purposes and see which one works for what we need.
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