BuildCast Video Player UWP Sample

BuildCast is an end-to-end sample built to showcase the Microsoft Fluent Design System as well as other capabilities of the Universal Windows Platform. It permits browsing, downloading and playback of select video podcasts including a sampling of the most popular ones from Channel 9 as well as some popular Windows tech enthusiast feeds. It has other features such as ink notes, bookmarks and remote playback. This sample was initially shown and discussed at the 2017 Build conference during the Build Amazing Apps with Fluent Design talk.

Features

At a high level this sample demonstrates usage of:

• Fluent design system (Acrylic material, Reveal highlight, Connected animations, ParallaxView, an Adobe XD UX Prototype etc)
• XAML controls and features (NavigationView, swipe commanding, context menu with icons and SVG assets, LoadedImageService, conditional XAML etc)
• Media playback including picture-in-picture and fullscreen views
• Inking and smart ink
• Project Rome and AppServices
• Background download service, Entity Framework and SQLite
• Windows composition APIs (InteractionTracker, implicit animations, scene lighting)
• Notifications with progress bar
• Share contract

Run the sample

Prepare your environment

This sample requires Visual Studio 2017 with Update 5 and the Windows 10 Software Development Kit (SDK) version 16299, Windows 10 OS - Fall Creators Update.

• Get a copy of Visual Studio 2017 Update 4 with support for building Universal Windows apps [includes SDK 16299]

• Get the latest Windows 10 Fall Creator's Update [10.0.16299.0 or later]

• Get the Windows 10 Insider SDK 16299 as a standalone download.

Additionally, to receive the latest updates to Windows and the development tools, and to help shape their development, join the Windows Insider Program.

Run

After opening the Visual Studio solution, set your startup project as BuildCast, the architecture to AMD64 or x86, and press F5 to run.

Code at a glance

The table below shows the platform features used in the application and where abouts to find them in the sample.

Release Notes Update 1 October 2017

• Add the Adobe XD UX prototype file
• Add back Spectrum Analyzer visualization to now playing
• On startup, app will check for cached media changes at filesystem level and update database state to match this
• Improved commanding on favorites, downloads, notes
• Design tweaks
• Known issues where there will be code changes have all been moved to issues on github
• Bug fixes

Known Issues

• Download progress reported via toasts / action center will not update when the app quits, even though the download will proceed using background transfer service. This is due to a known platform gap
• Deploying / running BuildCast on a XBOX will result in the app crashing due to a platform bug that is being investigated. More details here.
• A number of warnings have not been addressed
• Things that didn't make it from the Build talk:
  • TreeView control: did not ship in the final Fall Creator's update
  • 360 video playback: this will come in a future update to the app

App details

Frameworks

Framework	Usage	Code file
Entity framework	ORM to store objects in SQLite	LocalStorageContext.cs
SQLite in UWP	Primary mechanism for persistence	N/A
.NET Standard 2.0	Provides System.Tuple	NowPlayingState.cs

App features

App feature	Description	Code file
Adobe XD UX Prototype		BuildCast.xd
Acrylic material	Acrylic material usage	Branded.xaml
Reveal highlight	Reveal highlight usage	CustomMTC.xaml
NavigationView	NavigationView usage	NavigationRoot.xaml
Connected animations	Used in connected transitions between pages	FeedDetails.xaml.cs
Inking	Ink annotation on video frame	InkNote.xaml.cs
Smart Ink	Recognize and convert images to glyphs and emoji	InkNote.xaml.cs
Emoji picker	Select emoji	InkNote.xaml.cs
Context menus with icons	Context menus with icons	FeedDetails.xaml
Swipe commanding	Swipe controls on lists	FeedDetails.xaml
Mnemonics/Access Keys	Mnemonics usage	EpisodeDetails.xaml
Command bar	Command bar usage	Player.xaml
Coordinated animations	Used in connected transitions between pages	FeedDetails.xaml.cs
Conditional XAML	NavigationView loads based on OS version support	NavigationRoot.xaml
SVG	BuildCast logo on homepage	Home.xaml
Adaptive state triggers	UI optimizations for assorted screen sizes	Home.xaml
ParallaxView	Home screen parallax layout	Home.xaml
Lighting	Buffering animation	BufferingVisualManager.cs
Interaction tracker	Interaction tracker	Timeline.cs
Layout animations	Layout animations	Home.xaml.cs
LoadedImageSurface	Composition Surface for Images	CustomMediaPlayer.xaml.cs
Composition expression language	Timeline animations	Timeline.cs
Implicit animations	Poster frame fade out when video starts playing	VisualHelpers.cs
Compact overlay mode	Picture-in-picture support	ViewModeService.cs
Spectrum Analyzer	Realtime visualization of audio spectra for currently playing clip	player.xaml.cs
Full screen mode	Full screen mode for video	ViewModeService.cs
Share contract	Share the annotated frame	InkNote.xaml.cs
Background transfer service	Video download for offline viewing	BackgroundDownloadHelper.cs
BTS toast completion notifications	Toast display upon background download completion	BackgroundDownloadHelper.cs
Toast progress bars	Visual download progress indicator	BackgroundDownloadHelper.cs
App services	Support Rome based remote control	RemotePlayService.cs
Media Composition API	Extract frame for Ink annotations from local file	PlayerService.cs
Template studio	Theming, settings model

Contributing

While we expect to at a later date, this project is not currently accepting contributions. For now, if you have any feedback or questions, please open an Issue on GitHub for the team.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact [email protected] with any additional questions or comments

Copyright © Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This program/project is and its use is subject to the MIT License