openmax interface to implement or gstreamer plugins?

[George Kiagiadakis]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 4:36 AM, ZiQiangHuan <hzqhuan at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi,
>
> I know gst-openmax is available for platform which has openmax IL interface.
> Our platform does not have openmax IL interface implemented, but we want to
> use gstreamer as our multimedia framework. So there are two methods, one is
> to implement gstreamer plugins for our platform, the other way is to
> implement openmax IL interfaces. So my question is, what's the difference
> between the two methods, and which method is easier for us?

The easiest and best method would be to implement native gstreamer
plugins. OpenMAX IL is a very complicated API that you can't possibly
implement right. Vendors usually implement a subset of it, with
vendor-specific changes and hacks to fit their needs, which leads to a
mess. Needless to say that gst-openmax / gst-omx usually require
changes to work correctly with a different implementation of OpenMAX.
They are not 100% reusable. This is especially because without
vendor-specific hacks, the performance of an openmax-gstreamer
solution is suboptimal.

For some better explanation of the technical aspects of this matter,
I'd recommend you to watch Sebastian's talk from the last gstreamer
conference -> http://gstconf.ubicast.tv/videos/a-new-openmax-il-integration-layer-for-gstreamer/

So, again, if you have the possibility of implementing native
gstreamer plugins and not using openmax, please do it and save
everyone from the trouble.

Best regards,
George