[gst-devel] Re: [tarkin-dev] Tarkin file extension

[t .]

Not quite. 

http://gstreamer.net/faq.shtml#faq1
"Is GStreamer a media player?

No, GStreamer is a development framework for creating applications like mediaplayers, video editors, streaming media broadcasters and so on. That said very good media players can easily be built on top of GStreamer and we even include a simple yet functional mediaplayer with GStreamer called gstmediaplay."


Will it help a user play some random propriety codec flavor of the day?
Nope. Don't get me wrong, it would be wonderful if the whole world supported
a system like GStreamer. Share and Enjoy. But the fact is that it will never
be able to universally handle all formats. At least with the atool scheme,
you'll get something, even if the result is saying something like 
"due to M$'s anti-consumer commitment to maintaining its monopoly you
cannot play files using codec XYZ on non-M$ operating systems. Please write
to the whoever created this file and ask them to instead try other comparable
and less encumbered codecs such as http://www.spiffycodechere.org or ..."

Although I'm sure that a lot of the necessary file identication
code that would be needed could come from gstreamer. That would be
great if it was a separate program ala 'file'. 

Besides, which do you think would be easier:

plaything   something.xyz

or (http://gstreamer.net/faq.shtml#faq3)

gstreamer-launch disksrc location=thesong.mp3 ! autoplugger ! osssink

(Strange that their webpage has bangs...)

Besides, there are many other "doesn't fit the world domination" view
of things, like not currently supporting non-unix. That would be very
non-ogg like. 

t.



On 2001.09.04 14:01 Erik Walthinsen wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Sep 2001, t . wrote:
> 
> > I would kill for a universal player FE that would look at the
> > file, determine what kind of file it is, parse it a bit to
> > determine what codec was used, and then launch the correct
> > program to view/play/whatever it. If it fails to find the
> > correct program, it would display all the necessary urls
> > for the person to get the tools to watch it. That way you
> 
> This is what GStreamer can and does do today, for supported media.  It
> creates a file reader and attaches a 'typefind' that runs through a list
> of test functions to determine a) what the file type is, and b) what some
> of the basic properties are.  The autoplugging system then inspects all
> available plugins and automatically constructs a pipeline that will render
> the media file.
> 
> A future project is to optionally send the URL or the first part of the
> media file to an "all-knowing" server on the net that would respond with
> the location and configuration of plugins needed to play the file, if they
> exist.  The plugins would be downloaded and inserted right into the live
> application, so the media can start playing.
> 
> See http://gstreamer.net/ for more.
> 
>       Erik Walthinsen <omega at temple-baptist.com> - System Administrator
>         __
>        /  \                GStreamer - The only way to stream!
>       |    | M E G A        ***** http://gstreamer.net/ *****
>       _\  /_
> 
>