[gst-devel] General questions about GStreamer

[Benjamin Otte]

Since this is mostly about opinions, I thought I'd share my view on this,
too.

On Fri, 7 Jan 2005, Hynek Hanke wrote:

> 1) How is it with GStreamer and network transparency. I understand this
> is not a key design point. Is it possible to fully and without any
> restrictions and timing problems (as long as the network permits) run
> media applications over the network?
>
While GStreamer itself does not aim at being network transparent itself
- primarily because most we code applications don't need it, so it doesn't
look useful to add to the core set of features, secondarily because the
GStreamer core is difficult enough as it is and there's not enough people
understanding it right now - we are certainly supporting people who
want to use GStreamer to provide network transparency. There is some
interest in this area (I know of Warsaw Pakt and have had some talks with
Fluendo people about that topic), but noone is seriously working on it I
think.
Which underlines the point David made elsewhere that it doesn't seem
important.

> 2) Which sound server do you recommend to use with GStreamer?
>
GStreamer as a project does not recommend any sound server. Every
developer however has his own preference. Mine is: Don't use a sound
server, they all suck. The best bet from my POV is dmix, but dmix doesn't
provide network transparency.

> 3) Have you talked to the people from MAS and NMM? Why are there
> three projects doing mostly the same?
>
Since the second question has been discussed to death in the Gnome vs KDE
and MPlayer vs Xine discussions already, I'll focus on the first:
We have talked, sure. And we definitely look at what the other projects
are doing so we can nicely incorparate their good stuff into GStreamer in
the future.
Really, I'm very happy that there's different projects trying to
accomplish a similar goal. It spurs on development and it makes sure
there's something that you can use if we manage to really screw
GStreamer up some day.

Benjamin