[gst-devel] The Future of RTP

[Zeeshan Ali]

Hello everyone,
    As you can all see that people are submitting patches for RTP
stuff. But we are not in a position to do any justice with these
patches until and unless the clouds of uncertainty over the future of
RTP in the Gstreamer universe are cleared-off.

   The first issue is the separation of the RTP packet
creation/encapsulation and parsing, and the actual transport of these
packets. This separation is completely in accordance with the spirit
of RTP but we don't have any clear vision of what will happen with the
RTCP part, which is essential to RTP streaming. My idea was/is to
leave the RTCP part to the the app. providing appropriate signals in
the RTP packet parsing elements.

   Another rationale behind this separation is the fact that RTP
packet encapsulation isn't so generic: i-e each media format has it's
own way of being encapsulated. Based on this same reason and the
licensing issues was also our decision to just copy the code we needed
from an RTP library (1) which was just a modification of the code
given in the RFCs instead of linking the plugin(s) with a 'generic'
RTP library.

   This is the what i recall from our last discussion on the future
directions of RTP development. But there has been worries and criticim
popping-up regarding this plan. Anyway, we must now decide a 'clear'
road map.

Wim,
   I have heard through (un)reliable sources that you have recently
thought out some nice ideas regarding all this. Would you like to
share them with us?

  On as side note, I was to work on librtsp and ramon was to work on
the RTP. Unfortunately, I haven't made been able to make any
significant progress on my part because of getting involved in other
stuff after the economic failure of the video-whale project. Ramon
seems to be working on and off but I do not know of anything
committed/submitted by him. Maybe he got busy in other stuff too. :(
Having said that, I might start to work full-time on RTP if i get this
job I am quite hopeful about.

Regards,

Zeeshan Ali.

(1) I am unable to recall which lib. it was since we've been switching RTP libs.