Mentor

Joe Groff

Skills required

• Knowledge of C
• Knowledge of Factor's FFI
• Factor API design skills
• Knowledge of media formats and libraries

Level

Beginner

Existing work

Factor already has various multimedia libraries:

• ogg.* - bindings to Ogg, Vorbis, and Theora libraries
• id3 - ID3 parser in pure Factor
• openal - 3D audio binding
• audio.engine - an OpenAL-based mixer engine using the above libraries to support WAV/AIFF and Ogg stream playback

Missing is a framework for video playback. Bindings to native media libraries such as GStreamer, Quicktime, and Windows Media should be written too. The end goal would be a high-level idiomatic Factor API for embedding audio and video in GUI applications.

Technical details

Factor's C FFI (foreign function interface) is capable of calling out to any C libraries and providing C-callable callbacks. Any C library can be bound to and called from inside Factor. A large part of this project will be binding to existing media libraries and providing a consistent high-level interface for Factor.

Benefit to the student

The student learns how to bind C libraries to Factor using Factor's FFI, and also learns how C multimedia libraries work.

Benefit to the community

Factor will be suitable for multimedia applications if this project is completed.

Challenges

• Learning the APIs of various libraries