Video playback API for C++

[TristanS]

Hi Guys,

I'm currently underway developing an in-house 3D game engine for my studio here in Australia. I'm new to the gaming industry and obviously still an indie developer, though I've modded games for a couple of years now. However, I have quite a few years experience (4-5) in software development and server programming. I've started development on the engine (it's nothing too fancy) and integrated it with Lua, FMOD and Havok. However, I'm looking for a possibly free or free for non-commercial Video/Movie API/Engine. I realize technologies like Bink video would be the way to go, but we're trying to stick to the open source/free technologies. If you have any suggestions or pointers it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Tristan.

[Isaac Remuant]

I use libvorbis with OpenAl so I immediately thought about Theora.
http://www.theora.org/downloads/

A quick google search also brought up this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libtheoraplayer/

It's open source and royalty free but I don't know how suitable it migth be for games.

Apparently, Ogre has a plugin, that could prove an interesting read:
http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=16110

Let us know what you end up doing and what your experiences are if you can. It might be pretty useful.

[TristanS]

Thank you for that Isaac, was an interesting read! I have come across Theora before, but I'm talking ages ago. I'll download the libraries and do some initial tests and see how it performs! Video playback in games isn't necessarily process intensive anyway, as the game state is usually frozen during a cut-scene or introduction video. I guess where technologies like Bink take a leap forward is in their compression, since you don't really want to take up GB's worth of users space just for a few videos.