[da3dsoul]

My point was to address the previous posts that keep filling my inbox. Yes, these get emailed to my main account, just in case someone needs help and I know the answer.
This thread isn't for arguing over who should work on this. I explained why someone hasn't, and I requested that people stop acting entitled or like a specific feature they want is important enough for someone to put in an enormous of amount of responsibility for.
If you want something and have the skills or means to make it happen, by all means, no one should be complaining if you make it happen. That's what is great about open source. Complaining that an update isn't coming is definitely not the best way to get anyone to try, though.

[ashlar]

Complaining that an update isn't coming is definitely not the best way to get anyone to try, though.

 Personally I wasn't acting entitled in any way. I proposed the creation of a bounty to attract interest in keeping development active. There's not much more I could do, not being a coder.
Would $1,000 be attractive enough? $3,000? $5,000? What would be the correct figure to entice a developer to bring Kodi DSPlayer to the 18.2 release?  I ask you since you seem to have a clear(er) idea of the work involved.

[da3dsoul]

I wasn't referring to you specifically. As a developer myself, I can say that, at least in my case, tone is everything.
"Are there any plans for an update?" is a thousand times better than, "When's the update gonna be?"
The second is less offensive if I've already said I'm working on it, but, "Any news?" is still better than acting like I'm on a schedule or in any hurry to please anyone.

You were plenty polite. Some others were not. I'm not calling names, mainly because I don't commit them to memory if they are rude, but others were not polite, even if they meant no offense.

About the money thing, this might just be me, but it's not about the money. If I don't want to, I don't want to. Whether it's $5 or $50,000, if I choose to work on something, it's because I chose to for personal reasons. Usually, that reason is, "because it sounded fun."

If you offered me $50,000, I would gladly try to make DSPlayer the best thing that I can, as I do love the project. You notice that I made no promises. I can say what is required to tackle a project like this at the least because I know enough to understand that I don't know enough. I would need to learn a lot before I could even try to do a lot of things that DSPlayer needs right now. I would only take money because I recognize that it would take literally all of my time just learning what is needed.

[Sunset1982]

hey guys,

I updated my Windows to latest Windows 10 build (1809) last week. I also updated drivers and changed my gfx card (now vega 56). Since then, my pc suddenly stops sometimes when I play video files with my kodidsplayer. playback stops, player exits and focus is back in kodi. it is completely random. any idea what causes this?

[dado1971]

I wasn't referring to you specifically. As a developer myself, I can say that, at least in my case, tone is everything.
"Are there any plans for an update?" is a thousand times better than, "When's the update gonna be?"
The second is less offensive if I've already said I'm working on it, but, "Any news?" is still better than acting like I'm on a schedule or in any hurry to please anyone.

You were plenty polite. Some others were not. I'm not calling names, mainly because I don't commit them to memory if they are rude, but others were not polite, even if they meant no offense.

About the money thing, this might just be me, but it's not about the money. If I don't want to, I don't want to. Whether it's $5 or $50,000, if I choose to work on something, it's because I chose to for personal reasons. Usually, that reason is, "because it sounded fun."

If you offered me $50,000, I would gladly try to make DSPlayer the best thing that I can, as I do love the project. You notice that I made no promises. I can say what is required to tackle a project like this at the least because I know enough to understand that I don't know enough. I would need to learn a lot before I could even try to do a lot of things that DSPlayer needs right now. I would only take money because I recognize that it would take literally all of my time just learning what is needed.

 50k? get over yourself lol

[Warner306]

People are throwing around reasons for using DSPlayer, and I'll give it to you. It has nothing to do with HDR for most people. Kodi's built in player is slow and not very good at a lot of things. This is not intended to be offensive. They are aware of it, and they are clearly trying to improve it bit by bit.
I use DSPlayer because it can render subtitles without completely shutting Kodi down with lag. This is one reason to use it. Another reason is scaling algorithms. There's frame interpolation, HDR (which is poorly implemented at best, due to lack of OS and driver support), 3D (without killing kodi with lag again...), better sound support, and many more reasons.
Don't act like your specific use case speaks for even a majority of users.
Addon developers can make things work with DSPlayer if they want to, as well. I did. It's comparatively easy, considering that DSPlayer is entirely C++ on top of decades old code originally written for XBOX.

Someone wanted some ideas of what is required or helpful. Here's some that I encountered when attempting to aid development myself:

• C++ and all of the build tools involved
  
• Thorough knowledge of DirectX/DirectDraw/OpenGL/Windows Graphics and Sound APIs. This isn't completely necessary to work on DSPlayer, but you'll hit weird issues with no clue how to approach them without experience in those.
  
• Thorough knowledge of media codecs, how to parse them (even with libraries), and how to forward them to another application
  
• The ability to write code that does not crash. This does not mean that errors can't occur, but that you are capable of thinking and writing in a way that includes failsafe fallbacks to everything you do. You should never hit play or stop, and then see Kodi indefinitely lock up or crash.
  
• Knowledge of memory management in C++, specifically involving reading, managing, and closing streams.
  
• File Locking, as nothing will work if you are not letting MadVR, LAV, etc even access the filestream that you hand it.
  
• DRM and copyright implications, mainly to cover your own ass and prevent an accidental legal issue.
  
• Concepts on video technologies involved with encoding, including how framerate, codecs, containers, 3D and HDR, and things of that nature may screw with things. Not knowing these will cause poor color quality or worse.
  
• THE ABILITY TO BE POLITE, RESPECTFUL, AND INTERACT WITH A TOXIC COMMUNITY. If this thread shows anything, it's that no matter how cool you are, there are people who don't deserve your time. Despite that, you still can't be blatantly rude, or the experience will be ruined for all, and it'll very quickly drive you away when you realize nothing is worse than working for free and getting involved in petty flame wars over it.
  

Most of these do not require Book of Magnus level knowledge, but if you don't at least understand what they are and how they work, you will drop the project when you encounter an issue that flies a mile over your head. 

Thanks for your post. The list of required development skills is very helpful and probably is about as pessimistic as I thought in terms of finding a developer. Small updates to the current player are really all that is desired rather than any significant rewrites of the player.

If you could actually contribute, that would be welcome. But certainly no one would be pressured to do anything and they are free to ignore any condescending comments from the odd user here or elsewhere and do whatever they please with this project because it is still 100% free, hobby software. This is supposed to be casual and fun, not stressful.

Are these pie in the sky comments implying you would like to try to update DSPlayer or know someone who can? Or are you just spitballing about what it would take to be a developer?

[madjockxbmc]

hey guys,

I updated my Windows to latest Windows 10 build (1809) last week. I also updated drivers and changed my gfx card (now vega 56). Since then, my pc suddenly stops sometimes when I play video files with my kodidsplayer. playback stops, player exits and focus is back in kodi. it is completely random. any idea what causes this?

 There are a lot of changes there, does playback have issues with an external player like MPC-BE ?

[da3dsoul]

I've tried to fix some of the smaller bugs before, but just trying to figure out the code left me utterly confused. This was a few years ago mind you, so who knows if it would suddenly make sense now.

50k was an arbitrary number I made up. If you hired a paid programmer full time with the skills and experience I mentioned, they would be paid twice to three times that. Get over yourself. Good programmers are a special breed, and they aren't cheap. It's not about the money, because $5 or $50 isn't worth the time. The enjoyment of helping a project that you like is what is worth the time.

@Sunset: no offense, but why did you let Windows install that? There's nothing but bad news surrounding that update. Similar to Windows 10 update 1803, it made breaking changes to drivers and some other things.

[dwalme]

50k was an arbitrary number I made up. If you hired a paid programmer full time with the skills and experience I mentioned, they would be paid twice to three times that. Get over yourself. Good programmers are a special breed, and they aren't cheap. It's not about the money, because $5 or $50 isn't worth the time. The enjoyment of helping a project that you like is what is worth the time.

 This is the truth right here.

[Warner306]

You would have a short career as a DSPlayer developer. I don't know how many hours are involved, but it is barely a hobby now that a template for a working player is already in place.

You are probably right that DSPlayer needs a professional developer with some free time, and probably not even paid free time, just available time, period. If it was for a fee, it would likely only be for a remuneration of their time more than any kind of true financial incentive.

I did assume in the past that aracnoz was a skilled professional programmer by day in Italy, and I would assume a well-paid one by now. This project didn't seem that challenging for him.

For now, doing a proper merge to v18 and bug fix would be good enough for most of us. I still don't know what experience is required to just do that.

[da3dsoul]

I agree. Clearly he had his bugs that pissed him off, but you aren't a real programmer if you've never had those.

[ashlar]

50k was an arbitrary number I made up. If you hired a paid programmer full time with the skills and experience I mentioned, they would be paid twice to three times that. Get over yourself. Good programmers are a special breed, and they aren't cheap. It's not about the money, because $5 or $50 isn't worth the time. The enjoyment of helping a project that you like is what is worth the time.

Oh, if we were talking creating DSPlayer from scratch I agree that your figure would probably a conservative one. As Warner306 already mentioned, we currently "simply" need a merge of what's changed from 17.6 to 18.2. I guess it's not little work but I hope it's not as complex as rewriting everything.
And again, I wish to stress that my idea of a "bounty" to offer was simply meant in the sense of "is there something that poor ashlar can do, considering he's no coder?". The same spirit that led me to donate multiple times to XBMC/Kodi in my long love story with this awesome creation.

[da3dsoul]

That attitude is fair and appreciated by most developers.
I've not seen the internal code changes in 18/18.1, so I don't know how much trouble it would be. I know it wouldn't just be a simple patch and build, though, as they specifically did work in the area that DSPlayer covers.
I know that as an addon developer, 18/18.1 has brought some good but really annoying changes. There was a lot of things that were changed, down to annoying but simple changes like the duration format (time in seconds to "hh : mm : ss").

EDIT: apparently there's no simple way to say hh:mms without it becoming a stupid smiley.

[Warner306]

For areas of VideoPlayer that crossover with DSPlayer, wouldn't simply be a matter of moving some code around to address merge conflicts, or would the DSPlayer playback engine need to be adapted to v18?

[da3dsoul]

No idea, but if you are going in and looking to see what needs to be done, then it's already more than a simple patch and build.

It might be simple moving code around or fixing merge errors, but I don't know, as I've not tried.
I've got my hands full just making sure my addon doesn't break in Leia.