Case-Study: Multimedia CD/DVD publishing application

The Client is a major Russian publishing house. Some time ago the Client started using CD and DVD disks as additional media for publishing of well-known books and magazines, multimedia albums with photo, audio and video information.

Problem

The process of CD/DVD compilation is quite complex and includes such stages as:

• prepare disk content and create its structure
• create disk labels (both for disk itself and for disk-box)
• burning

The problem is that there were no integrated software to perform all the stages above, so it was required to have different software for disk structuring, labels creation and for burning.

The Client was looking for a possibility to integrate all the process stages into a single software product to increase the production performance.

Solution

Qulix was engaged as a software development company for the task.

Since networking was not required for the project, we decided to create a standalone application with required functionality. The main idea was to use a project-based approach, when new CD/DVD project had to be created to make it possible to edit and publish related information. The whole scope of features was logically separated onto 3 major groups:

• Disk structure management.

For that purpose we've created an internal virtual browser which enabled user to:

• add/update/delete files and folders there both new and from Win explorer
• preview files (photo, audio, video, text)
• manipulate with multilevel folders
• and others
• Label design module.

We used graphical object-oriented approach here (MS Visio like). So it is possible for user to select one of predefined drawing-area templates, to draw different shapes over it like lines, rectangles, ellipses, text etc. with such additional features as filling with color and with some pattern, rotating and scaling.

• Disk burning module.

We have integrated a third party burning component into the system. It was wrapped with common for the system GUI and also was previously carefully tested during prototyping phase.

Used technologies and products

Visual Studio 6.0, MFC, C++, InstallShield

Project workload

30 man/months

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