Mehmet Sen

email:msen@top.cis.syr.edu

Introduction

The primary goal of this project is to improve an interface to work on specifically mpeg files in a directory. User can see the mpeg files as images in the program environment, and click on them to call other application programs such as a mpeg video player.

The general purpose of this project provide a more friendly and effective environment to the user while playing the mpeg video files in a directory. However, the specific purpose of this term project for me is to learn mpeg file format and decoder in more detail rather than producing very nice user interface. Therefore, I will not go behind a satisfactory user interface in the project.

Programming Structure

The directory viewer of mpeg files can be divided into two parts in the perspective of the programming; user interface of the viewer and background programs to deal with mpeg streams.

Part1:Interface of directory viewer

What the user see is the a directory manager which only deal with the mpeg files. User can surf on the directories to get mpeg files. This part of project currently planned to be as an application on the netscape; user can see the directories from the netscape like surfing on the internet. However, one restriction will be applied here that the surfing area will only be the user private directories since downloading and decoding all the files from a remote host would be so costly. The directory manager on the netscape can be either an applet or a Java script application. It may be divided into several frames with respect to needs of directory manager. For example, one frame will include the control buttons of directory like "view" directory images' button, and some possible mpeg displayer function buttons. By using the control buttons user will be able to run the backround programs like mpeg decoder and displayers.

The other frame will show the directory contents. Another one may contains information about the current mpeg file or the stream, etc. The image for each mpeg file will be the first frame of the file or the one of the front frames in the stream. One nice property can be added in the future which reflects the different scenes in the movie, (but it depends the time.).

Part 2: Mpeg decoder

In the background of the directory viewer will be a modified mpeg decoder which will pick the jpeg images from the mpeg movie. The mpeg decoder will be written in C language by modifying current decoders. The input of the decoder will be an mpeg file and the output is an jpeg image (or images). If time permits another nice future will be adding a scroll bar to the user interface and providing images one by one by another version of the mpeg decoder.

Software Tools

As mentioned above the web languages like Java, Java Script, and perl with C programming language will be used. Netscape and an available mpeg displayer will provide main supports to the mpeg directory viewer.

Project Work

The programming structure of the project needs two kind of independent work to be done. One is developing an user interface in current web technologies and the other is dealing with mpeg formats in a classical program environment. Although it may be very easy to write both kind of programs for the experts of both field, the fields are rather new for me. I need to learn new programming languages and details of mpeg formats, which I prefer to learn the second more than first. Because of this the result of project may not be very sophisticated kind of product, but it will reflect my interest to the topics in this restricted time.

Current Position on the Project

The current situation in the project is designing user interface of the directory viewer. I have not dealed with mpeg formats so far. After finishing the main structure of user interface and communication processes it will go faster.