Technologies

One technology used in the Ladybug Player is to access the hardware acceleration for video processing. Another technology is to implement the multiple player. Third technology is to use SQL database for player management.

This snapshot shows three Ladybug Player, one in fullscreen, another two in picture-in-picture on Windows 7.

GUI

Ladybug Player is consist of a control panel and a video viewer. The control panel called Nbar is a set of 2D ribbon buttons. The viewer can be windowless or window. The Nbar and viewer can be put on different monitors.

Mouse is a device to control media playback on viewer.

Double clicking the left mouse button on the viewer surface, the video can be resized from normal display to fullscreen or in reverse. User can also drop and move the view window to anywhere even if the view is in windowless.

Clicking the right mouse button on the viewer surface, user can show/hide Nbar.

Here is the Nbar snapshot.

The title bar displays the elapsed time of a video in the format hours : minutes : seconds. ms and the elapsed time vs the total duration in percentage.

There are four rows of control buttons.

• The first row includes Open, Step, and Settings buttons.

  Open button allows you to select mp4 video, mp3 audio, or jpg image from an Open File Dialog.

  Step button allows you to step forward video in one frame.

  Settings button allows you to set controls in more details. We are talking about the settings later.

• The second row includes Previous, Play/Pause, and Next buttons.

  Previous button allows you to go backward to the previous media in the playlist.

  Play/Pause button allows you to play or pause video. While video is playing, press this button will pause the playback. While video is paused, press this button is going to play the video again.

  Next button allows you to go forward to the next media in the playlist.

• The third row includes Save As, Loop, and Windowless buttons.

  SaveAs button allows you to save current configuration of the player such as windows size, clicking *.npm file to restore the player to current state.

  Loop button allows you to enable or disable the playback of a playlist in loop.

  Windowless button allows you to set window in normal or in windowless (without border).

• The last row includes Up, Down, and Exit buttons.

  Up button allows you to increase the volume a little bit.

  Down button allows you to decrease the volume a little bit.

  Exit button allows you to exit the player. If the player was launched alone with a *.npm database file, after exiting, the *.npm file will be upgraded to the last status of the player. While the player was launched by itself, there are no any files to be saved.

  Here are two pages of the settings: playlist and media.

  Playlist page allows user to add and delete a media file into the playlist. User can also use the up and down button to change the position of a media item in the playlist.

  Media page allows user to set loop, rate, volume, balance, mute, and windowless. Furthermore user can click info drop down button to display the media information. The value of rate is ranged from 0.033333333 to 200. The regular value is 1.0. So you can watch the speed video by setting rate to 2.0 and watch the slow video by setting rate to 0.06.

  Customization

  You can customize player and store the configuration in a .npm file. You can also double click the .npm or launch it in a command line in the following format:

  "FullPath\Ladybug Player.exe" [FullPath\myconfig.npm | FullPath\mymedia.*]

  This command line means that run Ladybug Player without parameter or with parameter myconfig.npm, or mymedia.*.

  If there are no parameters Ladybug Player will be launched with default configuration. You can launch as many Ladybug Player as your computer resources are not exhausted. *.npm represents Neatware Player Media.

  In the case that the first parameter is a *.npm file, Ladybug Player is going to launch the player by setting the configuration from the *.npm file. *.npm is a Sqlite 3 database file that is an open standard. You can read and modify *.npm files by any Sqlite Database Managers free or commercial. Usually we use an added-on called Sqlite Manager for FireFox browser.

  In the case that the first parameter is a media file, Ladybug Player is going to launch the player and display the media file instantly.

  More than one parameters are reserved for future use.

  Keyboard Control

  Ladybug Player supports the use of keyboard for media player control. Here is the list of keyboard control:

  Key	Operation	Description
  F1	Help	Display PDF file
  F2	Play/Pause	toggle
  F3	Step	Show one frame
  F4	Loop	Play media in loop or not
  F5	Open	Insert one or a set of media into playlist and start current
  F6	Settings	Set playlist or media
  F7	Save As	Save .npm file in Ladybug Player folder
  F8	Windowless	Toggle windowless and frame
  <-	Previous media	Play previous media
  ->	Next media	Play next media
  ^	Volume up	Increase volume
  v	Volume down	Decrease volume
  ESC	Exit	Exit player