Beginner: advice on contributing to the comunity

Looking for advice on how to solve a problem in the processing video library and working with the community. I want frame accurate video file seeking, which can't be done right now in processing. If we could have frame accurate control over video it would open up a lot of possibilities to visual artists and filmmakers.

My experience level is: Processing plus a bit of android/eclipse, various other languages, always a sunday watercolorist, never a code contributor.

Any tips on how to start a thread or feature request to solve this issue? Also - any advice on moving from being a coder for my own purposes to contributing to the community? (e.g. when was the first time you were able to look into an existing library and improve on it and how did you get there?)

everyone has to start somewhere! Thanks for any advice.

Comments

  • edited March 2017

    Hi @chrios1001 -- great question. I can't speak for the Processing core developers, but:

    1. are you familiar with github?
    2. and have you reported an issue there?
    3. have you created a fork and generated a pull request?

    Here is the Processing Video library public source code, along with a place to submit issues (or send pulll requests for code contributions that are suggested changes):

    In the great spectrum of code difficulty video libraries can be a bit tough as a place to get started, given the amount of dark arcana that go into working with various video standards and interfaces.

    @codeanticode might have more specific thoughts.

    Also worth mentioning for others that this is the context of the problem you are interested in:

  • First step to helping the community will be helping the others on this forum. A lot of questions tend to go unanswered and right now, there are only about 10-15 of us who actively answer questions on the forum. You can help here.

    Next step, search for new bugs in existing Processing software and submit bug reports, if they don't already exist.

    Next step, try writing libraries. It will give you much needed experience.

    Next step, try adding new features to existing libraries. You will need to choose the libraries carefully as not all people are willing to let others improve their libraries. You will also need a bit of knowledge of how to use GitHub.

    Now you're ready to start helping in repairing the "official" Processing libraries, etc.

  • Thanks for the advice, I agree video libraries may be over my head. I have spotted some anomalous behaviour in the ways that the processing video library reports back on time(), and I have a sketch that demonstrates this, so that may be a start.

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