[gst-devel] problems with totem & GStreamer HEAD

[Jon Trowbridge]

This is a list of the major problems I'm seeing with video playback in
Totem using the GStreamer back-end.  I think that these are all
GStreamer bugs, not Totem bugs, but I don't know that for sure.  Some
may be GstPlay bugs.

Normally I'd just file these in bugzilla, but I'm posting this to the
list in the hope of getting a sense of the bigger picture.  Which
components are causing these bugs?  What is involved in getting these
things fixed?  Any information would be appreciated.

All of my testing is done with xvimagesink and viewing matrix.avi,
with gstreamer, gst-plugins and totem HEAD as of the morning of 1/23.

Thanks,
-J


Seeking by dragging the slider doesn't work.  This doesn't seem to
be an avi-only problem.  On days when I can get totem to play mpeg
movies, they aren't seekable either.

It is possible to confuse totem by trying to do relative seeks w/
the left and right arrow keys.  Things like
  (totem:12195): GStreamer-CRITICAL **: file gstdata.c: line 236
  (gst_data_unref): assertion `GST_DATA_REFCOUNT_VALUE (data) > 0' failed
appear on the console and the audio/video playback gets very strange.
Sometimes there is a segfault.

If I pause and then unpause, weird stuff happens.  The audio goes
away and the video becomes very slow and jerky.  The video sometimes
goes all black or all white.

Resizing the totem window causes the video to go black.  The video
comes back as soon as the window gets any sort of (non-resize) X
event.  For example, moving the totem window or moving another window
to partially obscure the totem window.

Once the window stayed black when I started the movie, but the
audio began to play.  The video appeared as soon as I moved the totem
window, and it then proceeded to play just fine.  (Maybe related to the
previous problem w/ resizing?)

On a few occasions, I've seen the video playback "stutter".  After
playing about 15 seconds of matrix.avi, it jumps back to the beginning
and starts again.  I haven't been able to reproduce this in a
controlled manner.

If I allow the movie to play to completion, bad things happen:
(a) Sometimes totem will get wedged and the window won't repaint.
Clicking at the window can trigger a segfault.
(b) Sometimes totem will get wedged in a different way: the window
repaints, but totem consumes 100% of CPU.  It is otherwise
unresponsive.
(c) If totem doesn't get wedged, and then I play the movie again, the
video sometimes is very small and doesn't resize along with the totem
window.  I can't reproduce this problem consistently.
(d) Once, I played the movie again only to have it play much too fast
with no audio.  Strange.

If I open matrix.avi while matrix.avi is already playing, weirdness
ensues.  It starts the movie at the beginning, but 'fast forwards' to
the exact point it was at before and then resumes playing at the normal
speed.

The 'zoom' options work, but 'fullscreen' doesn't... the totem window
grows to fill the screen but the video stays the same size as before.