[gstreamer-bugs] [Bug 364056] New: Improve FAQ for Gstreamer

[GStreamer (bugzilla.gnome.org)]

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  GStreamer | documentation | Ver: HEAD CVS

           Summary: Improve FAQ for Gstreamer
           Product: GStreamer
           Version: HEAD CVS
          Platform: Other
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: Normal
         Component: documentation
        AssignedTo: gstreamer-bugs at lists.sourceforge.net
        ReportedBy: csbartlett at comcast.net
         QAContact: gstreamer-bugs at lists.sourceforge.net
     GNOME version: Unspecified
   GNOME milestone: Unspecified


1. Current FAQ fails to make clear in the Using Gstreamer section the
following:

   a. there are apparently currently two versions of various CLI utilities such
as gst-inspect and gst-launch - i.e. one must append 0.8 or 0.10 - therefore
the commands indicated in the FAQ don't work as stated.

   b. there are currently various groups of plugins - good, bad, ugly - for
0.10 (I think?) - to use the 0.10 CLI utilities one needs these plugins - not
the 0.8 ones.

2. I mention the above because, due to the lack of clear documentation, a
superficial look at what is available would result in the conclusion that it
does not work or does not work well. You should provide some very basic, but
precise instructions that allow a casual observer to observe the best
performance of gstreamer without very much effort (i.e. the instructions should
work uniformly across a range of OSs/distributions etc). These instructions
should be in a prominent position on your website, rather than buried in a FAQ,
with a big button saying "Try It". The instructions should also include simple
code that demonstrates the same functionality - the code should be using your C
library and other renditions using various bindings such as Python etc. The
casual observer is mainly interested in seeing it work in various forms first
and can always go back later to understand the details of how to construct the
application. This exercise will also force a check of how well all these
renditions really work across a range of platforms.

3. Marketing is not a favorite task for those really interested in creating
great software, but, as you likely know, marketing is important to gain
acceptance. Marketing in this case boils down to showing great performance very
directly.

4. I have more than a casual interest in this area and hence continued to look
farther, though the performance was not so great initially.

5. I thought I would send you this report as a heads-up.

6. Appreciate the efforts on gstreamer - I hope it turns out to be all that the
gstreamer team imagines it will be.


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