[SDL] video playback API in SDL

[Arjan]

> Message: 10
> Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 16:26:08 +0000 (GMT)
> From: Edward Byard <e_byard at yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [SDL] SDL 1.3 roadmap...
> To: "A list for developers using the SDL library. (includes
> 	SDL-announce)"	<sdl at lists.libsdl.org>
> Message-ID: <289818.99775.qm at web25405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> Will (or could) SDL 1.3 include any form of video playback API? I think it's so important these days....
> 
> Ed

Video playback is not a good idea to incorporate into a generic API like
SDL. Because video standards are constantly evolving and new
(de)compression methods are thought up every other week or so, it would
be impossible to keep SDL up to date. At least, that's my humble
opinion ;)
For video playback there is already a really good project you can use,
namely FFmpeg. (http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/) There is only a tad bit of
documentation, but there are increasingly more people using it, so there
is an increasing number of people you can bother with questions.
If that is a bit rich for you, you could try SDL_ffmpeg. It is a little
wrapper I wrote, aimed on being an easy to use multimedia library. It is
in a _very_ early stage but it is in fact usable. I committed it to the
sdl libraries section. So if you need simple video playback, check it
out. I really need some people who start using it, since I need the
feedback to improve on it.
- arjan