On Fri, 2009-01-09 at 10:55 -0500, Guy Boisvert wrote:

Hi!

Hello Guy.

It may be a little OT but i'm searching for a c/c++ programmer for the development of a remote controlled multimedia player that would run under CentOS with Aja OEM card. We'd use this player in our fully automatic TV broadcast system.

We currently have a player (developed in house) that works mostly ok on Winblows but it lacks many features like remote monitoring (SNMP or something like that), fault management, etc. The code is not documented and there are problems migrating from Stradis SDM-275 card to SDM-290, from Win2000 to XP, etc.

A quick look on the Stradis web site didn't really tell me whether Stradis (or Vitec Multimedia, now) has linux drivers available for their cards. If not, do they provide enough hardware documentation to write drivers? I didn't bother to set up a login on their site, so that information might be available.

I was thinking that their should be programmers on the CentOS mailing list. Sorry if i bother other list members with my request.

I have done a lot of programming in C, but not C++. I was on a project to prototype a media player for use in the United States running under linux. Technically, there's not too much of a problem. Legally, at least at the time, there were some major problems under U. S. law concerning patent and licensing issues, but we were mostly looking at using software codecs to handle viewing. That may not be a problem in Canada, and your use of hardware decoders may bypass that in either case.

We are based in Montréal, Province of Quebec, Canada. Frankly, we have to find a Winblows programmer first to evaluate the documentationless code we have for our current player. With the obligation to go digital and the fact that we may even have to go HD, we'll want to go Linux and get an ultra-stable platform.

What is your time frame? Centos 6 should be coming within the next year or so. Centos 5.3 should be out in months. Then again, you might be able to do everything that you need under the current Centos releases.

Also, what is your code handling? I can also do Windows programming in C (among other languages, but not including C++).

It would be nice to evaluate if something like VLC or MPLayer could provide the functionality we want too.

They can both do a good job manipulating multimedia streams. Once again, I'd be more concerned about legal and licensing issues. There has been a recent court decision in the U. S. that may invalidate software patents, but it could be reversed, and is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

I would certainly be interested in hearing more about what you're doing. And I would love to be able to provide consulting services to you.

Thank you,

David Mackay