Tuesday, August 3, 2010

PDAP and OwlWatcher

I put up a new version of the PDAP:PDTREE Mesquite package last night. Nothing big in this one, mostly a couple of messages regarding the resolution of polytomies (it's arbitrary so the details of individual contrasts will differ). The most important change is that PDAP now supports Mesquite's new install system so you should no long need to manually download archives and drag folders of class files around. It also gives you control of where the PDAP examples (misc PDI files and the guided tour wind up). Previously you were told where to put the class files, but I'd imagine the examples would languish in the archive fold until forgotten or deleted.

I have a request pending that might yield another PDAP release in the next week or so.

OwlWatcher is making progress. The player is more or less done - there are two small issues that I know of (specifically related to audio buffering and 'rocking' single frames back and forth), but happily I can go back to more interesting things such as finishing the integration with version 3 of the OWLAPI. When the release finally comes, it will be a two step process, first installing Xuggler, followed by OwlWatcher itself. If there are other java API's for video that you would like to see supported in OwlWatcher, feel free to request in the comments. I don't have much time to devote to OwlWatcher these days, but now that I've gone through the process of building a player up from a decoder library, it should be easier the second time (Quicktime provided a player that was adequate, but I think this solution will be more flexible as OwlWatcher continues to develop).