Beginning Programming

[timeitniear]

Hi....

I would like have a deeper understanding of the code behind this application and possibility be able to contribute. How does one get started? I have a basic understanding of programming from my HW background. Is there a place to read and understand the various encoding and decoding methods used? I have a what I consider a small first project in mind that I would like to start my experience. I would like to be able to call Filp4Mac when the stream is .wmv, asx or any other extension that is usually handled by Windows Media Player.

Any recommendations or suggestions welcomed

Regards

Tim

[happy.neko]

For development you need solid knowledge of core java. Oracle's tutorials are actually very good: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/

Everything else depends on what you want to achieve. PS3MS's code definitely not for the faint of heart. Mostly undocumented, sometimes very messy etc. I'm still little scared to touch MencoderVideo.java, for example. And definitely nowhere near 100% understanding how it works.

Creating plugins on the other hands looks relatively easy and straightforward. You just implement several interfaces and populate resource tree anyway you want.

[SubJunk]

Or be like me and just poke around until you get to know it; I had never touched Java until PMS. It can be fun just playing around with it!
Open up the source code and change some things around, compile and test, see what your changes did, then your knowledge grows from there

I'm still little scared to touch MencoderVideo.java, for example.

The memory buffer stuff is the real scary part :p

[ExSport]

But there is someone who experiment with it(buffering) and is trying to fix some bugs there:-)
https://github.com/ps3mediaserver/ps3me ... er/pull/56
Anyway I wanted to say that I have no knowledge of Java, only general programming skills(IT Admin, not the programmer) and I was able to hack some code to do things better or add some new features
Reading the code and changing the "output" is much easier than creating something from scratch so feel free to start with reading the code and start experimenting

[timeitniear]

Thanks for the pointers. I don't feel so bad after seeing where you guys came from! Hopefully you'll see more than questions from me in the future!

regards

Tim