Aaron Winborn

Drupal Media Player. Splash screen.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

(Image credit reway2007)

Sadly, my plans for August don't include Drupalcon Szeged. Already too much travel this summer, and the dates conflict with a training my partner is doing, so that would be hard on our 4yo.

Back in June, I made a list of personal project plans, so I figure I'll revise that list for the rest of the summer.

First, the status report on the projects from June:

• I finished writing Drupal Multimedia! And we're about half way through the editing process. The book is scheduled to be published in September, and can be pre-ordered now.
• The Embedded Media Field port to Drupal 6 is still in process. It's ready for testing on new installations now, but I still need to write an upgrade path from Drupal 5.
• Morbus Iff and I have made strides with the engine for 5 Second Game. The module allows character creation and the combat engine is nearly ready for play.
• Except for some experimentation with audio metadata, I ended up not really working on GetID3. I'll probably end up waiting till the fall to work on this, unless I get new inspiration.
• I haven't written any tutorials yet, but hope to do that regularly once the book has been published and I have more free time available.

New projects of mine in progress and on the horizon:

• Media Player, which I've already blogged about a couple of times. This is an exciting project. Once it's mature, I plan to hook it into jQuery Media and Embedded Media Field for optional support as a start, and write patches for other media modules.
• I want to tie YouTube API into Embedded Media Field.
• More Drupal 6 upgrades, including Views Slideshow and a couple of other modules that need attention.
• Jump more into Drupal 7 development, especially for media handling, such as with the hook_file patch.
• Presenting at DrupalCamp NYC 5!

That's all for now.

Here's a sneak peek of the new flash Drupal Media Player, developed by yours truly with OpenLaszlo!

Obviously, it's still rough on the edges, and all the options in the theme function aren't hooked up yet. Although it works already (after a fashion), don't use it yet unless you're willing to suffer the consequences.

When it's done, this module will come with its own player, fully GPL'd, and will support others out of the box as well, such as JW Flash Media Player and Wimpy. But who's going to want those anymore?

The module adds theme functions and a simple API that should be easily usable by other media modules, such as Embedded Media Player, jQuery Media and whoever else wants to jump on board. The other modules won't need to worry about where a particular player lives or how to invoke it; the theme functions provided will be robust enough to handle player colors, sizes, icons (including placement, layout, and other customization options), splash screens, playlists and more. Administrators will be able to override any of the defaults, including player of choice. Additionally, it'll be easy enough to invoke manually as well:

print theme('media_player_player', $filepath);

And best of all, since it's in OpenLaszlo and GPL, with the source included in the module, it's easy for developers to modify even the player, without even needing a Flash IDE. (The whole thing is created with an XML.)

Kudos to EclipseGc for nudges and encouragement to get this project going!

Next on the list: volume controls, playlists, override color/logo/splash options, settings pages, pull in the other players, youtube/blip.tv/other provider support, tie into other media modules

(Cross-posted at gdo.)

So my brother in law (Erik Gecas) has an art exhibit, Painting Physical Presence, that's just opened in Las Vegas! Particularly exciting for me (though admittedly only slightly relevant to the world of Drupal) is that I created his web gallery a few months ago, with Drupal of course. The show is in tandem with Ayako Ono.

The web gallery is largely created with Views Slideshow (for which I still owe a port to d6). In fact, it was largely for this site, which makes a small appearance in Drupal Multimedia, that I beefed up development for that module (and the Magnifier module, that is also used on the site, though not in the book).

The Media Code Sprint has been a great success thus far! We have built a fairly comprehensive test suite for hook_file. It still needs to be rounded out, so that, for instance, all the cases for file saving are covered. However, validation is fleshed out, and the framework is pretty much usable and ready for testing gurus to go in and run it through its courses.

Jonathan Hedstrom (jhedstrom) of OpenSourcery joined us this morning, and created the FileDirectoryTest class, finding and fixing some flaws in the current file api in the process. His help was invaluable. And we all quashed other minor bugs and problems in the documentation, so it's been a most successful sprint thus far.

Tomorrow should prove to be productive as well. It's my last day in Portland before heading back east to Pennsylvania, so I plan to make it a great one. Thanks to Advomatic for sending me out to the media code sprint! It's great to work with a company that recognizes the value of Open Source, and reinvests in the community.

Drewish and I will be taking a break in the early afternoon to present a remote session for DrupalCamp Colorado on Drupal Multimedia, where we plan to talk about the state of the art and our recommendations for Drupal 6, as well as a brief overview of the successes of the Media Code Sprint, and what that means for the future of Drupal. See you there!

Andrew Morton (drewish), Darrel O'Pry (dopry, remotely), and I are heading up a Media Code Sprint in Portland this week! Come help, in person or remotely, if you're interested in multimedia and Drupal! It has now officially started, and as I've volunteered to help keep folks updated, here goes...

First the reasons.

Number One: Better Media Handling in Core

Dries conducted a survey prior to his State of Drupal presentation at Boston Drupalcon 2008, and number one on the top ten (or 11) list of what would make THE KILLER DRUPAL 7 Release was "Better media handling".

Let me repeat that. Better media handling.

People have done really amazing stuff in contrib, but it is difficult (if not impossible in many cases) for developers to coordinate the use of files, as there is no good means for file handling in the core of Drupal. Thus, we have several dozen (or more) media modules doing some small part, or even duplicating functionality, sometimes out of necessity.

We need (better) media and file handling in Drupal core. In particular, there has been a patch for a hook_file in the queue for over a year, which has been in the Patch Spotlight (for the second time, no less) since May! (And has been RTBC several times during that process...) Come on folks.

One of the powers of Drupal is its system of hooks. We have hooks to modify nodes, to notify changes to user objects, to alter nearly any data (such as forms and menus). Noticeably absent is a consistent handling for files or any sort of notification. We need hook_file.

So goal Number One: get media handling in core. The means? Add hook_file and make files into a 1st class Drupal object. We'll be creating a test suite for functionality in the hook_file patch to validate it and "grease the wheels" to get it committed.

The other goals of this sprint pale in comparison to the first in utility, but are still highly desirable and worthwhile.

Number Two: Refactor File Functionality in Core

As an extension to the first goal, there is a lot of inconsistency with how Drupal currently handles files. For instance, in some areas a function may return an object, and in others a string. Additionally, some functions are misnamed, or try to do too much to be useful as a file API.

Some specific examples: for what it does, file_check_directory may be better suited as something like file_check_writable, or maybe even split into that and file_check_make_writable. Also, for instance, file_scan_directory needs to return file objects, rather than the current associative array (keyed on the provided key) of objects with "path", "basename", and "name" members corresponding to the matching files. (The function does what it needs to, but the returned objects have keys not corresponding to anything else used in core.)

So goal Number Two: refactor file functionality in core. The means? Go through and check for (and fix!) existing file functionality for documentation and consistency.

Number Three: Spruce up Existing Contributed Media Modules

There are several much needed multimedia modules that have not yet been upgraded to Drupal 6 (or which are still in heavy progress). This includes (but is not limited to) Image Field, Image API, and Embedded Media Field. Additionally, some major improvements can be made, both to these, and to other essentials, such as the Image module, such as creating a migration path from Image to Image Field (once that module is stable).

So goal Number Three: spruce up existing contributed media modules. The means? Get these modules upgraded!

I want to recognize the valiant and heroic efforts made by everyone to date, as fortunately, there has already been significant progress on all these fronts. That makes our job (relatively) easy. In some respects, we just need to finish up the jobs that have already been started.

Thus, drewish declared this week the Media Code Sprint!

We need your help. If you are a developer, or want to be a developer, jump on in! If you aren't ready to develop, or consider yourself too new for that, you can still help test patches and functionality. Jump on in! And please, even if you don't know how to apply a patch, you can still help with documentation and other small (but important) tasks. Jump on in!

If you're in Portland, You Have No Excuse®. If not, you can jump into #drupal in IRC any time you're available.

The official dates for the sprint are today (Wednesday July 23, 2008) through Saturday (the 26th). We'll be online and working most of that time. I'll make sure we continue to post progress as the week develops.

Of course, as is the wonderful nature of Drupal, this is an ongoing process. Even if we achieve our stated goals, there will always be more.

Thanks,
Aaron Winborn

So I just made a formal announcement of the pending publication of Drupal Multimedia to Drupal.org, which was promoted to the front page of d.o!

What a fun and nerve-wracking task that was. Trying to distill several months of work into a small list. Tweaking every word to make sure it's right. Then even in the end, realizing I'd made the post in third person, but left my signature in first.

But this is nothing compared to the book! We've just started the editing process, and it's really great, seeing the words from the first chapter I wrote months ago, and having to face the reality of their obsolescence. I knew taking on the project that I wanted to write the book for Drupal 6, which didn't even exist at the time. So the first half of the book was speculative in a very real sense; few of us knew in October what merlinofchaos had planned for Views 2!

That's what the editing process is for though. We're making sure the book is relevant for Drupal 6. (And I'm trying to keep in the necessary parts to ensure it's still useful for those still using Drupal 5, even if those are relegated to hint and tip boxes.)

It's amazing how far Drupal has come over the years. That we can devote an entire book to integrating multimedia into Drupal is a testament to that. When the book is finally in your hands, I hope reading it will be as helpful for your continued learning as writing it has been for mine.

Though my next book might simply be a blog...

So Lullabot just bragged on Drupal, rightfully so. I was thinking, "Well of course, they can handle 20k comments in 24hrs... Drupal is scalable!" Still, it's nice to see that in action.

Of course, as my family and I finally broke down and got a Wii this summer, the first video gaming experience my wife has finally admitted to liking, I had to go and enter the contest for a Wii Fit.

Of particular interest to me, although admittedly off on a tangent for this example, is that I've just finished writing the last chapter to Drupal Multimedia (available in September!), where I pontificate a bit about the future of multimedia handling in Drupal. And I just had to bring the Wii into the fray.

I believe that just around the corner, we'll see tactile media become of interest to the Web. And of course, once something's available for the Web, there will quickly be a dozen related modules making use of it for DrupalWii. Second Life is already showing the way to 3D navigation; once we have touch, for which the Wii is an early adopter with its control stick "rumbling", we'll be on the fast track to virtual reality on the web.

I already now have an excuse to do some occasional QA on the Wii, or Second Life for that matter, even without that, since they both use the Opera browser...

And sorry about the pun, wii couldn't help it... ;)

Embedded Media Field has grown exponentially in the last year since I've begun developing it. From its humble beginnings as a brainstorming session at DrupalCampNYC last spring, it has grown from a quirky method of make embedding YouTube videos easier for editors to a full-featured suite of modules allowing for drag-and-drop placement of third party videos, images, and audio clips.

Used on a wide range of sites, such as Air America, NRDC, and Drupal Dojo, the module is a flexible and powerful solution for embedding multimedia.

Read on for its strengths and weaknesses...

Advomatic just launched a new feature for Air America's player. Users are able to create their own play lists of favorite audio and video clips, and sort them in their preferred order.

To see this functionality in action, you'll need to go to the Air America site, and create a user account. After doing so, launch their player, by pressing on the big Listen Live button on the top left of every page.

Add two or three audio clips by pressing the "+" next to a clip, then go to the video tab and do the same thing.

Finally, go to the Playlist tab. Here, you can click and drag clips to sort them as desired. Go ahead. It's all saved, which you can confirm by going to another tab, logging out, logging back in, etc.

Site recipe follows!