64bit/Mediaplayer

Requirements

• Maximum bid USD $2,500 (fixed price for entire project)
• Fast internet (20gbps or better)
• a powerful, modern Mac or PC with:
  • 16GB RAM or more
  • 8 cores or more
  • at least 200GB free (REQUIRED!)
• Either:
  • Macintosh (with "Parallels Desktop" or "VMWare Fusion")
  • PC (with "VMWare Workstation")

Deliverable

Using Qt Widgets & C++, you will create a cross-platform layer-compositing media player with these features:

• uses hardware decode for h.264 (i realize this may be an issue if working within a VM, we will have to figure this out)
• uses hardware acceleration for playback for all code paths (openGL or native both mac and windows, user selectable depending on best performance)
• has a transparent window background (for when no movie or video is shown) (ie: you can SEE the desktop in the background, and when playing media that has transparency, you can see behind it to the desktop)
• allows three or more layers: background color (optionally transparent), Optional video (h.264), zero or more optional animated graphics (with transparency) (these may be 8 bit or 32bit)
• animated graphic layer may be drawn into during playback real-time (text / bitmaps etc), eg: scrolling text along bottom
• plays at HD size at 60fps even with video plus graphics
• animation sources are "pull" model: polled at best frame rate, told what time to produce
• all audio types (mp3, AAC, mp4, whatever else) decoded to PCM, with callback to user space for optional realtime modification of audio stream as PCM eg: key changing)
• bonus (not required): actually implement high quality independent key and tempo changing
• bonus (not required): volume normalizer (for when playing audio, make it sound like an average relative volume)
• audio layer(s) may be composed into the output audio stream (from multiple PCM streams)
• individual audio output comps can be sent to separate audio hardware (eg: one to speakers for singer / room, separate one to headphones so DJ can audition next song)
• final composed video may be “split” and sent to more than one final window or window pane simultaneously (without degrading frame rate, ie: keep texture on GPU, reference from multiple windows)
• ability to capture final composed video / audio and compress to h.264: this does NOT need to be realtime, nor displayed on screen, but must be able to be run on a background thread so as not to block UI operations

Freelancer Type

• Speak english fluently (no broken english)
• familiar with both mac and windows development environments
• is fully familiar with developing QT desktop apps
• is familiar with Version Control (we will be using Perforce)
• understands MVC
• familiar with Apple's CoreFoundation data structures and APIs (on windows known as "CFLite" & "CFNetwork")
• familiar with Python (used in build system for pre/post build steps)
• can work pretty much full time
• must provide weekly work schedule ahead of time (eg: i plan to work monday through thursday for 5 hours each day)
• provide scrum type progress updates at the start AND END of each working day (what you worked on last, what you plan to work on next, any blocking issues)
• communicate frequently (literally communicate with me every day)

I will provide a VM pre configured thusly

• Qt Creator 4.8.1 with Qt 5.12.1
• either: macOS 10.14.3 & Xcode 9.4.1, or Windows 10 & VS2017
• Python 2.7 and all the build scripts that use it
• Perforce (Helix) for version control, with your creds and workspace
• my already-working shell program which has:
  • preliminary menus and windows
  • “video” window shell where you will be displaying the video content, with preliminary code that plays a movie file
• The reference app (kJams Pro) is already installed in the VM.

The Point of this project is to basically re-creating the kJams app functionality in Qt (64bit). This reference app already implements software playback version of what is described above (in a 32bit app).

Oops I forgot one thing

You will need to install the K-Lite codec pack to get h.264 playback. Later I'll be switching to using the built-in decoder, but that won't be ready until Qt 5.13, according to this bug report and the ensuing comments.

Milestones

10% payout at each milestone, with rest of payout at end / upon final acceptance

1. freelancer.com only: acceptance milestone (you get this just for accepting the project, to cover freelancer fees)
2. playback of h.264 video (no audio) through compositing engine (with eg: composed text overlay)
3. audio decompressed from video / mp3 into PCM, PCM played separately in sync with video (volume controller may be connected as proof of concept)
4. transparent window (must implement both mac and windows)
5. playback of composed text & graphics with transparency (so text / graphics appear to show on top of desktop or window that is behind video window (all done with hardware accell, eg: OpenGL)
6. ability to capture final audio / video and re-compress to new h.264 file
7. rest of work / finishing touches.