[gst-devel] Re: [vorbis-dev] Semi-off-topic ramblings

[Myers W. Carpenter]

[cc'd to vorbis and gstreamer-devel because I thought both lists would 
 like to see this ]

> I'm curious if anyone else is at all fed up with the current 
> state-of-affairs of media support under *IX. As things stand it's rather 
[...]

Hi,
	Caught your post on vorbis-dev, but I'm not on vorbis, where Monty
suggested this go, so email me directly with any replies.
	I would be another person fed up with the media support under linux.  I
started on a project I was calling libAV, right after coming up with the
name and setting up a sourceforge account I ran across the Canvas
project <http://canvas.linuxpower.org/>.  They wanted to get something
out fast, using code out there.  More wandering it the web brought up
something a lot of projects with somewhat the same goals but they were
either dead or had no code yet or both (gmedia, Gnome Media Framework,
projector).  Then I found something a lot more promising: gstreamer
<http://gstreamer.sourceforge.net>.
	gstreamer's main author is Omega Hacker, who fingers I keep finding in
more and more linux media pies.  He works as a programmer in a  The
whole idea behind gstreamer is similar to DirectShow on Windows, and Be
Media Kit.  To use the gstreamer you have a "source" (file/rtp
stream/video capture/etc) and you have a "sink" (video display
region/file/rtp stream/audio visualizer/etc) and you hook up filter
inbetween the two that modifies the data in an approprate way.  This
makes the whole system really flexable.  
	Once this is done you could, with very little effort spent (and mostly
on your user interface), write a xmms-work-alike, a video confrencing
app, a movie player, a vcr-work-alike (recording tv to disk or heck just
stream it over to your friends in the third world  :), a movie player, a
movie converter, and more.
	GStreamer used to be Gnome Streamer (still on the top of all their
files in CVS), but I think they are no longer tieing themselves to
Gnome.  For now they are tied to GTK because they use it for it's object
model, but as of GLib 1.4 there will be an object model GLib and
GStreamer will loose that dependancy (meaning you won't need an X server
to run this).
	Since decoders and encoders are just filters in the system and all
filters (so far) are shared libraries they could easily be binary only. 
Now how easy it will be to convice Apple/M$/(Sur)Real to relase
something like that I think will be hard.  Another idea is to use
winelib to access the Windoze DLL's need to do this.  If you can't get
realtime speed, at least you could covert to a ogg file (once we have a
video codec) or mpeg1.
	Have a look at the project and see if this is what you are looking
for.  And if some one wants to write an ogg and vorbis filter that would
be cool too. :)

		myers.


-- 
You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.