[gst-devel] quality/profile interface

[Ronald Bultje]

Hi Benjamin,

On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 13:12, Benjamin Otte wrote:
> This sounds an awful bit complicated.

Depends... Note that this is the profile editor API, the plugin
interface API and the API for applications that uses the profiles.

> I'm trying to get the requirements now to get an abstract view (This goes
> for all the stuff, from quality interface to audio profiles:
> - There needs to exists a list of "profiles" to use for $x.
> Can we define $x as something generic? Probably not, becuase s-j will not
> be interested in video encoding profiles and gst-record will not be
> interested in audio-only encoding profiles.

I currently define 'x' as an element. I'd love to make it work for a
list of elements too, but I couldn't find a solution to that yet.

Since S-J will never create video encoder elements, it also will never
actually see anything like a video encoder profile manager.

> - A "profile" is a description for a part of a pipeline. Or is it an
> element's properties? Or both depending on context?

I'd like it to be both (i.e. a part of a pipeline consisting of a number
of elements and for each element a list of properties + values).
Currently, it's just the element's properties for one element, not a
pipeline. The hard thing here is how the application is going to know
what to plug in to which free pad in a pipeline. If we can solve that,
pipelines are fine too.

> - A "profile" could be defined by elements, applications, users -
> essentially anyone?

Yes.

> - A "profile" should then be used by every app using GStreamer.

Could, not should. Since it's just a wrapper of properties, one can
simply ignore the profiles and use the properties directly.

Ronald

-- 
Ronald Bultje <rbultje at ronald.bitfreak.net>
Linux Video/Multimedia developer