[gst-devel] Gstreamer vs Vlc ????

[David Hoyt]

> 1. Legality of the codec implementations. For each product, which
> codecs are available? Do they comply with the letter of the law in all
> jurisdictions where you and anyone to whom you distribute your
> software plans to use it? For VLC, I am unaware of any MPEG-LA codec
> implementation that will run on VLC that is legally licensed in the
> U.S. or any country respecting U.S. patent law. To use MPEG-4, AAC,
> WMA, H.264, or any number of other patent-encumbered codecs, you can
> either break the law; live in a country where it isn't breaking the
> law; or use legally licensed codecs. Since VLC has none, that leaves
> only Gstreamer and the codecs that you can buy from Fluendo:
> http://www.fluendo.com

This is important -- the vlc devs themselves recently asked apple to pull a
vlc build from the app store due to licensing (GPL) issues. It's my
understanding, however, that you can license x264 and use a vlc+x264 build
legally. I've never done it before and so don't know the ramifications, but
it seems possible.

> 6. Bindings. What bindings does VLC have for developing software
> against the VLC core using non-C languages? Well, it has Python
> bindings, sure (so does Gstreamer); but what else? If you have a
> particular programming language you care about, make sure that VLC
> supports bindings for that language. If Gstreamer has bindings that
> VLC doesn't for your desired language, that might be a strong reason
> to use Gstreamer (or, alternatively, contribute new bindings to the
> VLC project!)

vlc has java bindings at least.

> 7. Community. This is a hard one to quantify, or even qualify, but the
> friendliness and helpfulness of the community makes a big difference
> when I'm doing software development. I haven't worked too much with
> the VLC community, but I know that the Gstreamer community is one of
> the best in terms of being civil, providing sound advice, and being
> available over a wide array of media (IRC, email, etc.). Not to
> mention that you can get professional Gstreamer support from some
> companies, I understand ;-).

This is what really did it for me at first because I was evaluating vlc vs
gstreamer vs mplayer vs helix. The gstreamer community (especially on IRC
for me) has been exceptional compared to vlc. With vlc I was basically told
I was stupid for even asking, even though I was a complete beginner, wanted
to help, but didn't know how to go about doing what I wanted (being
unfamiliar with the api). A few times of that and I was done with them.