BeyondMedia SDK Documents

[Brett]

Hello folks,

The below link will point you to the first revision of the BeyondMedia SDK. It contains the initial documents / help files neccessary for creating plugins and skins within BeyondMedia. The installer also includes a packager for automating the process of creating .bmplugin and .bmskin files!

Please note this is a first revision! Over the next few weeks additional samples and tutorials will be added. If your interested in contributing a short tutorial please contact me directly through PM. We are particular looking for short examples that explain each widget (ie: textwindow, list, grid, etc.). It does not need to be the complete code, just the focused objective. For example, this could be the example code for textlist.

The INITIAL SDK is available here:
http://www.snapstream.com/ssdn/submi...staller_V1.exe

If you are not strongly familar with VS.NET make sure you read:
BM Plugins->Getting Started->Starting a Plugin From Scratch

If you have questions, or comments, about the SDK itself please reply here. If you have questions about coding please start a new thread.

Thanks,
-Brett

[bshinkle]

Great to see this.

One question, and this is one that was hashed previously, and I never saw an answer for.. I run vs.net on a pc separate from my htpc. Will the BM SDK run on that machine?

What about BTV development on this same machine (separate from server)? I do not plan on installing vs.net on my server.

I know you can't speak for Snapstream, but what are others doing?

[Brett]

Originally Posted by bshinkle

but what are others doing?

Don't quote me here, but I believe the license allows you to install BM on an additional development machine, for the sole purpose of developing.

-Brett

[PascalNL]

Are there any code examples on SnapStream BeyondMedia Widgets, Classes etc comming up?

I'm currently trying to create a (vertical) TexttList of (horizontal) TextLists of TextListItems. I want the rows having equal height, but it must be possible to have listitems (within each row) of arbitrary width. This results effectively in a "gant chart" -like overview, often used to display TV Guides on screen.
(each row corresponds to a channel, each listitem within the row to a show).

Is it possible to create this kind of custom widget and position it in the plugins.xml? I can create and position individual TextListItems, but I don't know at design-time how many Listitems I will have (And what their positions will be).

Is there anyone who knows how to create custom Widgets out of standard SnapStream Widgets?

Thanx for answering
PascalNL

[Kilrsat]

Yes its possible. I'm just really swamped with work at the moment. Might not be until the weekend that I can get an example put together.

[Kilrsat]

I'm attaching a quick and dirty example of a new list item. This list item uses multiple TextButtons to display information in line.

It should provide a decent idea on where to start, but there are a few issues with it. Mainly focus/keyboard related items. These will most likely require a new List that would allow the list items to control focus/key events instead of managing everything itself. This should be a simple extension of a TextList (or BaseList if you really want, but I'd go TextList) and overriding of only a few specific functions.

[phareous]

I'm looking to develop a plugin...is there an email address I can use to correspond with any of the beyond media developers? I've tried PM but no answer or box full

[Kilrsat]

I'm generally available to answer any and all questions.

[mickwall]

Originally Posted by Kilrsat

I'm generally available to answer any and all questions.

Now you've done it.....

I have a TextPane that gets populated using the Command Interface, and what I want to do is when the list no longer fits within the window (i.e the scroll gets activated) I want to make the list slowly scroll to the bottom, Ive tried incrementing the scrollbar.value but this does not seem to work.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Cheers


Mick

[Kilrsat]

Originally Posted by mickwall

Now you've done it.....

I have a TextPane that gets populated using the Command Interface, and what I want to do is when the list no longer fits within the window (i.e the scroll gets activated) I want to make the list slowly scroll to the bottom, Ive tried incrementing the scrollbar.value but this does not seem to work.

Any advise would be appreciated.

Cheers


Mick

How smooth do you need the scrolling? I've gotten two different ways working so far, but it isn't a silky smooth transition yet.

[mickwall]

I was looking for smooth scrolling but if thats not possible then anything will be better than nothing!

Cheers


Mick

[Kilrsat]

Ok, vital code to all of this:

Need to declare this somewhere:

public delegate void ScrollDelegate( );

Now in the screen that has the text pane, add this variable:

private System.Timers.Timer		_scrollTimer;

In the constructor:

_scrollTimer = new System.Timers.Timer(500);
_scrollTimer.AutoReset = true;
_scrollTimer.Elapsed +=new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(_scrollTimer_Elapsed);

At the very end of "AddText"

_scrollTimer.Start();

And now the part that actually does work:

private void _scrollTimer_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e) {
			
	System.Windows.Forms.Form f = (System.Windows.Forms.Form)MainForm;
	ScrollDelegate sDel = null;
	sDel += new ScrollDelegate( ScrollUpdateWorker );
	f.BeginInvoke( sDel, null );
}

private void ScrollUpdateWorker() {
	//_synopsis.OnMouseWheel( this, new System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs(System.Windows.Forms.MouseButtons.None, 0, 1, 1, -5) );
	long delta = Math.Min( 4, _synopsis.ScrollBar.Maximum - _synopsis.ScrollBar.Value );
	_synopsis.ScrollBar.Value += delta;
	if( _synopsis.ScrollBar.Value >= _synopsis.ScrollBar.Maximum ) {
		_scrollTimer.Stop();
	}
}

I've also attached a whole class that implements this, incase you want to look at some specifics. A cleaner implementation would have created a new ScrollingTextPane widget, but I didn't feel like doing that much work. This combination of 500ms timer and a scroll value of 4 seemed to be the smoothest scroll for me that also kept text moving at a reasonable pace. You can fiddle with these numbers if the current scroll rate isn't to your liking.

[mickwall]

Kirsat,

Absolutely wicked, many thanks, I'll get this in to my code ASAP and re-release it.

Regards


Mick

[dzCepheus]

Can I build plugins with .NET 2.0 and expect them to work properly?

[dzCepheus]

Half a year later and no answer?