Video playback plugin

Hi,

I'm acually pretty new to the CrystalSpace scene, but not to programming. I've recently started development on a game (by started development, I mean all the pre-coding documentation, I've got a long ways to go before I start on the coding) and I've settled down to using CrystalSpace as the engine.

Now, on to the actual topic. I am planning on having video playback within the game, either as a fullscreen cutscene, or with the video played as a dynamic texture within the game itself. After looking through all the documentation and searches I could find, I came to the conclusion that this isn't currently supported in CrystalSpace. Content with writing the code to do this myself (but never having done it before) I started with the google searches to see what I could find. I am now confident that I can write what is necessary to do the video playback.

There are really 2 main questions that determine how I write this.
1) Is this something the community would appreciate to have, in general, as a plugin for CrystalSpace? I actually saw very few references to video playback and CrystalSpace, most of which was people giving up on the idea, or simply moving on.
2) If a plugin is created, how important is platform independance? Finding an appropriate library for use that spans a multitude of operating systems is difficult, while it is easy to find them for specific platforms (meaning either a translation layer or another strategy to accomplish cross-platform compatibility)

If the answer to both those questions is yes, then I have a method for creating the plugin that will create platform independance as well as adhering to the plugin standards. Essentially, there is a python library called PyMedia that enables accessing and manipulating media files. That basically means I have two options for the plugin. I can embed the code for the video playback in the C++ plugin, or I can create a plugin that creates dynamic access to python scripts. If I understand the plugin architecture correctly, this would be a dynamically created source file providing access to python scripts, essentially meaning you could write a python script and use it as if it was an actual plugin.

Ok, with that part out of the way, I would really like some feedback on what people see as more beneficial to the community before I start working on this. You are more than welcome to send me an email, but I prefer using the forum because it promotes open discussion of the ideas.

-Ismarc