Plugin update and next releases

Hello there, it's been quiet but you'll see things fire up again around here as we get out of our summer dev cycle.  I want to talk a bit about the next update, and the status on the plugins.

September will have a beta come out imminently which will become the beta release. This adds the ability to control the video settings that were added in the August release...this is for advanced users who are willing to risk performance or stability in exchange for trying to play 60fps video or codecs that have been notoriously flaky.  We want to always give users a choice...and I understand that sometimes older pics may be in codecs that seem to work fine on Dynaframe, but we locked them down to err on the side of caution and stability.  

The plan is to make this go to Beta, along with some performance and stability fixes, and then push it out for September. My plan for September is to work on some content to get ready for Halloween and some bugfixes in our backlog.

Plugin update!

I've been heads down on the plugin system and today I'm wrapping up the last major feature which is configuration.  You'll likely see a few updates this week as I do demos of what the end to end story looks like, but everything I talked about in the last post about plugins we were able to implement as far as the different types and functionality.  That's a huge win for the project as it's going to unlock the community of developers to enhance things.  We moved from c# which was very tough to debug to a python based plugin system.  I'll talk a bit about the details of how this will work:

1) Plugins are placed into a plugin folder which we'll share out under 'assets' so that they're easy to add/remove. They'll also end up in the store so that codes can be used to download them, but we'll only put plugins in the store we've code reviewed to make sure they don't do anything harmful to the frames.

2) Plugins consist of 4 main parts:

- a JSON file which specifies the name, a description and author of the plugin.

- a python file which is the 'main' portion of the plugin that gets executed

Optionally there is also:

- a JSON config file which stores off any settings the plugin needs to save off

- a webpage configuration file which the plugin can use to allow the user to configure it

I'm excited about how this came together.  Once I migrate the existing plugins I'll get videos up to show it end to end, but the main thing to know is that plugins seamlessly are a part of Dynaframe. They show up, have webpage configurations just like Dynaframe does, they can run silently in the background, be turned on or off, and they can call any of the web APIs that are available (and we'll expand their capabilities as we get feedback).  

The other goal we're working hard to achieve is to provide plugins that both enhance Dynaframe, but also provide valuable sample code to developers that want to also make plugins.  I strongly believe that copious documentation, sample code, and support will help us create a great community of developers.  And that's my vision to take this project to the next level...when we've got a bunch of developers that can extend it and contribute back, then the core team can work to support and focus on the engine, and we'll see the development accelerate tenfold.

That all starts with getting this right. Stay tuned this week for demos and an alpha release for plugins! (this will be built on top of the beta, but much more limited as we expect it'll take alot of changes as we get feedback)

Joe and team