[gst-devel] autoplug...

[Richard Boulton]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2000 at 06:35:41PM +0200, Wim Taymans wrote:
> I would like to have something like
> 
>   GList *gst_type_get_src_to_sink(src_id, sink_id)
> 
> to retrive a list of elements that will form a pad from
> audio/mpeg to audio/raw. The algorithm would try to find the 
> shortest pad between the two types which can be a very
> generic operation.


Wow!  That sounds like an incredibly cool thing to be able to do.
Lovely simple concept too.  The ability to do this (once it is
written) should be a major bragging point to say how cool GStreamer
is.


What exactly do you mean by "shortest" path though?  Are you going
to assume that all filters have the same cost, or allow them to
specify a cost in some manner?  For example, there might be a naive
filter to fiddle something which has a high cost; and some very
efficient alternative path via an FFT, something weird, and then an
inverse FFT - three elements, but it could be quicker...

Also, the quality of the trasformed data might be a useful thing
to be able to maximise.  You might have a quick'n'dirty filter for
compressing mp3s and a slow but good filter: selecting whether to
maximise for speed or quality could affect which of these gets used.


A first implementation could ignore this, but they might be useful
things for later.

-- 
Richard