Next week is BlackBerry Jam Americas 2013 and as a member of the Developer Relations team, I’ll be stationed at various locations over the three days helping out developers when I can. Better yet, i’m also hosting a lab that I hope you will find a lot of fun and very informative on stereoscopic 3D and HDMI output for your apps. I’m also presenting a session on getting the most out of Momentics to help you build and package your apps in an efficient manner and streamline your development process. This is something all developers should care about since saving time during development often means you can take on more projects and earn more in the process.

JAM54 – Lab: Adding a new Dimension to your BlackBerry Apps – Stereoscopic 3D ( and other advanced applications for output to the HDMI display)

My first experience with stereoscopic 3D, like most people, was from playing with a ViewMaster as a child. In the years since, I have experimented with stereoscopic photography, utilizing stereoscopic 3D graphics in 3D modeling and rendering software I worked on in university and during the first few years of my career, and now I am reviving some of that early work in my spare time and applying that knowledge to develop stereoscopic software for the BlackBerry 10 platform.

Stereoscopic 3D represents another way your app can engage with its users and set it apart from the competition. Imagine users playing your game on the big screen with the game play literally in their face or taking a look at NASA rover stereoscopic photos with their smartphone and feeling like they are looking out the window at the Red Planet. That’s the kind of emotion and excitement that this technology brings to those who truly appreciate it.

The techniques we will review in the lab produce stereoscopic 3D output via the HDMI display in a manner that should be compatible with the majority of 3D TVs and monitors in the market today.  The diagram below provides an overview of what type of output is generated and I will have sample code on hand so that attendees can dive right in and integrate it into their applications.

Is that all we will cover? Absolutely not. The stereoscopic techniques rely on HDMI output. HDMI output can be useful in a number of other types of apps as well. We will review some other use cases and show how the existing sample code can be adapted for those purposes. If you want to incorporate stereoscopic 3D output into your app or if you just want to know how to output content to the HDMI display in general, join in on the fun. After the lab is over, the 3D TV will be moved into the Jam Space for attendees so you will have the rest of the event to access the TV and test the changes you make to your apps and demo your efforts to others.  I’m looking forward to seeing what our developers produce with this new tool in their arsenal.

 JAM39 – Build and Packaging for native apps

As your app portfolio grows, you are probably trying to come up with ways to reuse code you wrote in a different application or organize it better, turnaround changes faster. Maybe the app’s download time is a little slow and you want to improve on it but don’t know how? If any of these questions apply to you, you want to attend this session. We will run through some tips and tricks we use for internal apps and some little known options available in the Momentics IDE to help you develop a build system to be more efficient during the development process.  We will show you some tips on how to build a Qt or Cascades shared library. If you develop on multiple platforms, we will share some tips from our porting guides on how best to create a shared pool of code that you can build on multiple platforms. If you want to use a shared library developed by someone else, we’ll show you how to integrate that library with the IDE for seamless integration with your apps.

These sessions are just the tip of the iceberg of the session catalog at this year’s conference. Join us in Orlando and learn a lot about what you can do now and what’s coming in future versions of BlackBerry 10. I am looking forward to seeing some familiar faces and to meeting more developers again this year.

So, you want to add video to your native OpenGL application on BlackBerry 10? Below I’ll go through the steps that you need to complete in order to get it up and running quickly.

The first thing you’ll want to do is create a window group in your screen creation code. The window group will be used to attach the video window to. The code is as follows:

       // Window group name
static const char *window_group_name = "videowindowgroup";

       if (screen_create_window_group(screen_win, window_group_name)) 
       {
              fprintf(stderr,"screen_create_window_group failed");
       }

The next thing you’ll want to do is handle the initialization of the video screen. There is a screen event called SCREEN_EVENT_CREATE that you need to listen to and initialize the video screen as you see fit. For example, if I wanted my screen to take up an arbitrary width and height I could do the following:

       case SCREEN_EVENT_CREATE:
{
              screen_window_t video_window;
              screen_get_event_property_pv(screen_event, SCREEN_PROPERTY_WINDOW, (void **)&video_window);

              int size[2];
              size[0] = video_width;
              size[1] = video_height;

              screen_set_window_property_iv(video_window, SCREEN_PROPERTY_SIZE, size);
              screen_set_window_property_iv(video_window, SCREEN_PROPERTY_BUFFER_SIZE, size);

              int order = 1;
              screen_set_window_property_iv(video_window, SCREEN_PROPERTY_ZORDER, &order);
              break;
}

It’s important to set the zorder on the video window as it’s behind your main window by default, so make sure the order is set to a positive number.

Once initialization is complete, you can create a method to play your video. You can just use mmrenderer in order to do the heavy lifting. We just need to point it to use the window group that we’ve already defined called “videowindowgroup”. An example might look like this:

// I/O devices
static const char *video_device_url    = "screen:?winid=videowindowgroup&wingrp=videowindowgroup";
static const char *audio_device_url    = "audio:default";

// Name of video context
static const char *video_context_name = "videocontextname";

// I/O variables
int                video_device_output_id = -1;
int                audio_device_output_id = -1;

// Renderer variables
static mmr_connection_t*     mmr_connection = 0;
static mmr_context_t*        mmr_context = 0;

int playVideo()
{
       int rc;

       /*
       * Configure mm-renderer.
       */
       mmr_connection = mmr_connect(NULL);
       if (mmr_connection == NULL) {
              return EXIT_FAILURE;
       }

       mmr_context = mmr_context_create(mmr_connection, video_context_name, 0, S_IRWXU|S_IRWXG|S_IRWXO);
       if (mmr_context == NULL) {
              return EXIT_FAILURE;
       }

       /*
       * Configure video and audio output.
       */
       video_device_output_id = mmr_output_attach(mmr_context, video_device_url, "video");
       if (video_device_output_id == -1) {
              return EXIT_FAILURE;
       }

       audio_device_output_id = mmr_output_attach(mmr_context, audio_device_url, "audio");
       if (audio_device_output_id == -1) {
              return EXIT_FAILURE;
       }

       /*
       * Build up the path to where the video is.
       */
       char cwd[PATH_MAX];
       char media_file[PATH_MAX];
       getcwd(cwd, PATH_MAX);

       rc = snprintf(media_file, PATH_MAX, "file://%s/app/native/myVideo.m4v", cwd);
       if ((rc == -1) || (rc >= PATH_MAX)) {
              return EXIT_FAILURE;
       }

       /*
       * Start the playback.
       */
       if (mmr_input_attach(mmr_context, media_file, "track") != 0) {
              fprintf(stderr, "failed to attach video\n");
              return EXIT_FAILURE;
       }

       if (mmr_play(mmr_context) != 0) {
              return EXIT_FAILURE;
       }

       return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Finally when we’re done, we’ll want to clean up the window and the mmrenderer contexts:

void clearVideoScreen(screen_event_t screen_event)
{
       mmr_stop(mmr_context);
       mmr_output_detach(mmr_context, audio_device_output_id);
       mmr_output_detach(mmr_context, video_device_output_id);
       mmr_context_destroy(mmr_context);

       mmr_context = 0;
       video_device_output_id = -1;
       audio_device_output_id = -1;

       mmr_disconnect(mmr_connection);
       mmr_connection = 0;

       int order = -1;
       screen_set_window_property_iv(video_window, SCREEN_PROPERTY_ZORDER, &order);

       int visible = 0;
       screen_set_window_property_iv(video_window, SCREEN_PROPERTY_VISIBLE, &visible);

       screen_destroy_window(video_window);
}

Hopefully this gives you a good start into incorporating video into your BlackBerry 10 applications. For some other related samples of using video, you can check out the VideoPlayerSample in the Cascades-Community-Samples and also the Video Overlay sample in the native samples.

Today at the BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 conference, the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook (“NDK”) left beta and ‘went gold’ for general availability. The NDK allows developers take full advantage of the power of the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet when developing apps. The NDK includes support for C/C++ POSIX library and compliance, device events like gesture swipes and touch screen inputs, access to code management systems using industry standard Eclipse CDT (C/C++ Development Tools) and advanced debug and analysis tools. QNX® Momentics Tool Suite, an Eclipse-based integrated development environment, is also included. It provides memory profiling, application debugging, and memory usage statistics to help developers debug sophisticated programs.

For the v1.0 release, we’ve kept the NDK lean and mean. APIs have been provided for the sensors on the device, as well as OpenGL ES 2.0. For sound, we’ve brought OpenAL along. For performance, POSIX threading. For portability, POSIX compliant APIs are included as well.

Additionally, the simulator team has been able to provide an OpenGL ES 2.0 environment to test out your 3D games. This means that our simulator makes use of your development platform’s hardware acceleration for 3D. As the NDK simulators mature, more and more features will be included as we are committed to providing developers the best tools possible.

The NDK is here, and it’s the start of a new and exciting episode for BlackBerry PlayBook tablet application development. If anyone has feedback they’d like to share, our doors are always open – don’t hesitate to engage with us on social media channels or the BlackBerry Developer Zone.

Download the Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS

How will you be using the new NDK in your application development?

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Update: AppCircus Spotlight on BlackBerry video recap is now available! Check it out via the link below.

BlackBerry Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2011 was a jam packed development party. Each bootcamp and speaker session was filled with eager developers looking to learn more about BlackBerry development. I was able to meet up with Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer relations, at the end of the day and get his thoughts on how things went, as well as the rundown of his BlackBerry Development Roadmap session (highlights: Near Field Communications, OpenGL 2.0, Magnetometer and Digital Compass support are all coming in BlackBerry 6.1).

We also were able to talk briefly about the AppCircus Spotlight on BlackBerry event. The event was streamed live on our BlackBerry Mobile World Congress 2011 page, but if you missed it, don’t worry! We have a full video recap of the event available by clicking the link below. Make sure to also check out these BlackBerry App World download links for the event winner, Gbanga and honorable mention, UrbanStep.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

While the recently launched BlackBerry® Developer Resource Center and BlackBerry® Developer Zone are great online resources for new and experienced BlackBerry® developers alike, sometimes nothing beats the feel of paper in the hand. With that in mind, I want to draw your attention to some new development resource books that I’ve recently had the pleasure of reading, and would recommend that all BlackBerry developers out there consider taking a look at.

BlackBerry Development Fundamentals by John Wargo

For the beginner developer, there’s John Wargo’s BlackBerry Development Fundamentals. This book is designed to help both new and experienced mobile developers learn how to build mobile applications for the BlackBerry platform. The target audience for this book is developers who are unsure where to get started with BlackBerry development, or developers who have dabbled a bit in BlackBerry development and want to learn more.

To learn more about the book and to order, visit http://bbdevfundamentals.com

Beginning BlackBerry Development by Anthony Rizk

Written for the beginner BlackBerry Java® developer, Anthony Rizk’s Beginning BlackBerry Development is a great resource. The book’s dust jacket promo sums it up pretty well:

“Are you a Java programmer looking for a new challenge and money-making opportunity? If so, Beginning BlackBerry Development may just be the book for you. This book will teach you everything you need to know to start developing apps that run on the BlackBerry family of devices and smartphones.”

To learn more about the book and to order, visit http://apress.com/book/view/9781430272250

Advanced BlackBerry Development by Chris King

This book by Chris King is designed to take your BlackBerry development skills to the next level. A great choice for those who have read Beginning BlackBerry Development and want to continue their learning! Here’s more info from the dust jacket promo:

“With Advanced BlackBerry Development, you’ll learn you how to take advantage of BlackBerry media capabilities, including the camera and video playback. The book also shows you how to send and receive text and multimedia messages, use powerful cryptography libraries, and connect with the user’s personal and business contacts and calendar.”

To learn more about the book and to order, visit http://apress.com/book/view/1430226560

Learn BlackBerry Games Development by Carol Hamer and Andrew Davison

If, like me, you’re passionate about games and would like to translate your skill and knowledge to BlackBerry game development, Learn BlackBerry Games Development by Carol Hamer and Andrew Davison is a great place to start. In this book, Hamer and Davison provide professional techniques that you can use for music, 2D and 3D graphics, maps, and game design patterns to build peer-to-peer games, role playing games, and more for BlackBerry. The book also gives coverage of JSR 239 (OpenGL ES) and includes code samples!

To learn more about the book and to order, visit http://apress.com/book/view/1430227184

That about covers my recommendations for now. If you know of any valuable BlackBerry development books, please let me know in the comments!