No more Development of the Caspar Client

IMHO there are many playout clients and very few CG clients. I discussed it previously.
The official client is a very complete and functional command repository and automation connector for the server and it already reached the top of what it should do. In the past coulple of years, the work put into the client was mostly compatibility patches. And I think that is ok.

This is a recurring concern.

I guess the “official” caspar client is a very important factor
for first time user’s to embrace or not too embrace casparcg.

Without a good client to probe the possibilities of casparcg a lot of people
will not find the power of casparcg and move on.

In our company casparcg will be dead without the client as firsttime user experience.

soo i think having a “official” client is very important for the project.
This does not mean that it has to be this one.
But a first time user must have a easy to find general client

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There is a list of clients here.

SVT uses the official client for most of their shows, like Melodifestivalen or the ESC in Stockholm, but also for news and a lot of other stuff. So I think this client is quite complete and far away from being basic.

Sure it depends what you want to do and how much automation you want to have. I used to do custom clients for all my bigger productions in the past, but now I do a lot using my Excel AddIn. Excel can do a lot and the AddIn only sends the data, that Excel is preparing to CasparCG for display.

Well, Autostep for everything is my most missing feature in the Client. Tomorrow I will have a lot of song texts for an TV-worship event… what I did: Put every single item in a group folder… that´s pure bullshit… :confused:
It´s not much the client needs, only some little functions…
https://github.com/CasparCG/client/issues that´s what it´s needs to be complete…

Hi there

The client is one of our most used tools here at SVT for broadcast, it is used by a lot of different people.
Without it we wouldn’t be able to work.

It is an open-source project that many people use but very few contributes to.

/Olle

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I agree but wonder if that is a lack of willingness or a lack of skills. The client being in c++ / qtcreator may be too large a threshold for people who are less skilled in the realms of software development. I don’t criticize the tech stack in itself, but perhaps if being publicly maintained is a goal then a different stack would actually be more suitable?

But then the task of rewriting the client in a new stack is so much work, for me it outweighs the benefits currently.

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Sure, I would edit it by myself and would implement the wishes - but for me speaking: I have NO clue at all from this programming language and would do more damage than something usefull :confused:

@mint It even puts me off doing any work to it. I have done plenty of C++, but never any QT so it would require learning a whole new framework to be able to do anything. I did try to compile it once not too long ago, and I think even just doing that took a while to get working.
Personally I am really on board with the client being remade in a more modern and easily maintainable stack.

@TheYouth yeah, c++ is not a very simple language and makes it very easy to do bad things which will cause bad and unexplainable crashes. It is not an easy language to jump into, which is why I would love to see a replacement using electron.

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@Armin maybe you could give some info of SVTs sight on this?

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Can you describe what you added to the client?

I merge waiting pr in the next branch, newer toolchain, newer Qt version, Windows version (and all dependencies) is now 64-bit, fixed various other bugs.

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Cool thank you. I will give it a try

Thanks Zebiolo

Gitwise do you want bugreport / feature requests on your branch or on main ?

Good question. SVT is the official owner but i think my branch will be too far ahead. My original PR did not get merge in the official next branch so i guess it’s OK to add them in my repo. We can always move them later if someone think that is more appropriate.

I just want to add to the discussion that i think someone should take the task to write a complete new client. I will try to maintain it until someone does.

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Yes, that would be good. Shall we open up a tread to discuss ideas around a new client? I think it should not be a 1:1 clone of the existing one only as an Electron (or something like it) app. What do you think?

My day to day job nowadays is embedded linux related stuff (kernel, uboot). Electron, javascript, html is probably way over my head. What i’m trying to say is that i will probably not be to any use.

Yes, I expected that, it’s the same with me, I am familiar on the Windows desktop (VB.NET) and a bit with ASP.NET. But we both (and others) could be of use to discuss, what we would want the new client to be like. :smile:

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I created the new topic: Discussion about the specification of a new "official" client so, everybody interested can join in. In the end it would be nice, if we would also find somebody capable and willing to implement that.

Great job Zebiolo! Are you able to add auto-step for every item? Actually it only works for groups :-/