[gst-devel] General questions about GStreamer

[Ronald S. Bultje]

Hi Hynek,

On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 19:22, Hynek Hanke wrote:
> 1) How is it with GStreamer and network transparency. I understand this
> is not a key design point. Is it possible to fully and without any
> restrictions and timing problems (as long as the network permits) run
> media applications over the network?

Network transparency, in GStreamer, is possible, but it's the
responsibility of the application to tell us what to do. For example, if
you want to capture a movie on box1 and play it back on box2, you'll
have to use tcpsrc/tcpsink elements on the network boundaries, and your
application needs to position those elements in the right locations. We
have a gstdataprotocol that can stream pipeline data over a network
socket as flat data. So although we're not network transparent as in
that we automagically select which computer in your home-brewed network
is doing nothing useful and then take it over to do efficient networked
data processing, we can be used over a network. But the application
needs to set that up.

> 2) Which sound server do you recommend to use with GStreamer?

Esound works fine. Polypaudio can be used, too, our recent gst-plugins
releases (>= 0.8.5) have a polypaudio element and it seems to work.

> 3) Have you talked to the people from MAS and NMM? Why are there
> three projects doing mostly the same?

We've talked to the MAS people several times. Some of us (though not me)
have talked to NMM people at aKademy, last year. As anywhere in the free
software world, there's usually multiple initiatives, and some are
better in one area and others are better in another. It's not a company,
we can't force people to use our project. Apparently they felt they
could do better. The designs are very much alike.

That said, both MAS and NMM are in an infancy state compared to
GStreamer when it comes to the implementation. We've been used as the
basis for Rhythmbox for years (and recently, AmaroK joined that part)
and support as many (or even more) audio formats as (than) XMMS. Totem
is performing very well as a video player, too, with the GStreamer
backend not lacking too much with respect to the current de facto video
players for the Linux platform, Xine and Mplayer. Although MAS and NMM
can both play .wav files, I don't see them getting anywhere close to us
anytime soon. No offense intended.

Ronald

-- 
Ronald S. Bultje <rbultje at ronald.bitfreak.net>