[gst-devel] Re: GNOME Development Series Snapshot 2.3.0: "Mighty Atom"

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller]

On Sat, 2003-04-12 at 06:44, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller">
> 
> > I think that adding a media player to the desktop release that do not use
> > the standard media backend and do not use the standard gconf keys defined
> > for audio and video ouput and which contains functionality already bundled
> > with nautilus-media would be a mistake.
> 
> Devil's Advocate:
> 
> It's also fundamentally important that stuff in our Desktop release works
> reliably and as per user expectations.
Which means all components share a common backend.

> Thus far, I see Totem as the media player of choice because it provides a
> pleasant and predictable user experience [1], has a responsive maintainer
> who releases regularly and cares about GNOME direction and user experience,
> and "just works". It is already widely used and tested, and has a fairly
> large and satisfied user base.
And GStreamer doesn't give a shit about GNOME direction and user experience? Is that 
your argument?

> You mention gst-player in your email. I haven't seen it operate in such a
> seamless, predictable manner as Totem. We haven't seen a GStreamer release
> for GNOME 2.2.1, nor GNOME 2.3.0. No one from the GStreamer project has
> posted reasons for this, or an update about development to d-d-l or r-t. I
> assume that most people are using gst-player from CVS?
Well there are many other modules that hasn't done this either, as for explanation
it is simply that a GStreamer release is a rather large undertaking
combined with us still working to get the two branch development model
working for us. We do plan a 0.6.1 release either this weekend or next
week which will clean up the known video playback issues, we will
probably make a new gst-player release too, but gst-player 0.5 should
work well with that release too.

As for working in a seamless, predictable manner, that is a rather
subjective thing. I ended up using gxine with xine due to Totem hangs,
so this debate can easily turn into a long string of worksforme
arguments.

> Can GStreamer/gst-player provide the features (ignore proprietary formats
> for the moment) and user experience that Totem does?
Thanks for that 'extremely' concrete question Jeff ;) First of all I am
not so sure we should bundle a video player, simply because the version
we ship will be so crippled in what it plays anyway so it will only give
us unhappy users. Let people instead download versions which do include
stuff, from sites that are willing to offer the full versions. I tried
setting up a list of what we could support in GStreamer that distro's
could include without any fears of legal trouble, and ended up with the
Ogg Video formats and FLI as the available video formats. Which based on
what kind of video is available out there isn't that usefull atm.

Secondly to try and actually give some sort of direct reply to your
questions, Gst-player supplies a HIG compliant GNOME 2 media player that
integrates itself with the GNOME Menu and mime-type system. It offers a
bonobo-object that other can embed and it use the same backend and gconf
keys that Nautilus and gnome-media use.

Christian

> - Jeff
> 
> [1] Except for when it shows visualisations for the sounds in video formats
> it doesn't recognise. Somehow, I think I'd prefer it to either a) not show
> any visualisation, only show sound and a "this format is not supported"
> thingy, or just say "this format is not supported" and not do anything. I'll
> take it up with Bastien. Notice how this fault is really minor and
> behavioural?
-- 
Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus at linuxrising.org>