Audio/Video Playback

MyRPG · Post by **MyRPG** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 1:50 pm

Hi, I've just come accross the Irrlicht engine and it looks great except for two things - it seemingly does not support:
-Audio Playback (e.g. MP3, WAV)
-Video Playback (e.g. MPEG, AVI)
Are there any (simple?) ways to do these sorts of things with Irrlicht?
Thanks in advance.

DeusXL · Post by **DeusXL** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 4:54 pm

Perhaps mixing with DirectX's functions ? (I know that DirectX managed has AudioVideoPlayback APIs and that they can be combined with Direct3D so I imagine it can be used with Irrlicht). Search on the web there are many tutorials on AudioVideoPlayback
PS : I advice however not to use it since AudioPlayback is very very slow and a real resources eater... FMOD's wrapper for instance is cross platform an works very fine.

PPS : Your question is posted on Irrlicht .NET forum but if you are asking for playing videos on Irrlicht with C++, there are many other posts that can help you.

cypher543 · Post by **cypher543** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 4:56 pm

Then there's always BASS.NET. It's a bit complicated, but it has tons of features.

MyRPG · Post by **MyRPG** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:28 am

Thanks for both your replies. It is unforunately just in .NET I want to play video. AudioVideoPlayback is actually bugged for DirectX usage (and slow as you said too). I've been trying to use DirectShow.NET for the *video* at least but it's so complex that I haven't managed to do it yet. Oh, and what's FMOD's wrapper? Thx again for your help.

P.S.: Where can I find BASS.NET? Google gets me nowhere useful.

DeusXL · Post by **DeusXL** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:47 am

FMOD is the most famous audio cross-platform library and its .NET wrapper is very well made (just download the Windows 32 bits SDK) :
http://www.fmod.org/

MyRPG · Post by **MyRPG** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 10:20 am

Ah, ok I see now. I must say the reason I mentioned audio was only because it would be nice to have audio together with the video playback. Video playback is the main desired feature, sorry I didn't mention that before.

DeusXL · Post by **DeusXL** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:25 pm

For video you can still take a look at these implementations for Irrlicht C++ I mentioned before (of course it can be ported to C# but it won't be an easy thing).
I just want to know : you need video playback for what sort of things ? including the video such as a cinematic (you could use third-party library such as DirectX's audio video playback which is a bit slow but not that much) or including in a game (for instance in a television set on your game, for that you shall need all resources and DirectX AVP is not the best, I would prefer Direct Show) ?

MyRPG · Post by **MyRPG** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 2:48 pm

Thanks for the reply.
Well primarily for intro scenes & cut-scenes (a main feature of my game). Simple video playback in other words (AVI, MPEG, or others like THEORA) AudioVideoPlayback *did* seem like the perfect solution but after 1-2 months working with it I discarded it finding out from MVPs & others that it was severely bugged. Anyway I'm currently trying to write a wrapper for my *own* "AudioVideoPlayback" using DirectShow.NET but as I said it's proving very difficult with the lacks of resources and rather buggy. I'm really looking for a complete working DirectShow solution or a third-party library that can integrate with Irrlicht (favourably) or in general DirectX.