proposed multimedia stuff for Gnome 2.2 Desktop Platform

[Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas urgent rug ac be>]

Hello,

after some to-ing and fro-ing, here is a list of modules to be proposed 
for Gnome 2.2 inclusion based on GStreamer.

1) gnome-media
  contains the sound recorder which iain has moved to GStreamer and
  is very pleased about.  I'm not sure this should be "proposed" since
  it's already in or that I should be doing this since it's iain's,
  but I'm saying it anyway because the move is fairly important.
  The good reason for the move is (repeat after me) "NO MORE SOX" ;)

2) gst-player
  gst-player is a movie player that has had some iterations as a test bed
  for GStreamer features.
  We have been told it isn't accessible enough out of the box, and we're
  willing to work on that.  We've been collecting a few comments on it
  but we'd appreciate a UI review.
  It would be nice to have a working MPEG player in the core desktop,
  and gst-player can fill the job.

  Totem is of course a worthy candidate as well - it has more UI approval
  and uses a more mature (though API changes happen) video framework.
  Moving totem to GStreamer is possible and on todo-lists, but not
  doable in two days ;)
  gst-player might however easily be UI-fixable provided people give
  us the right direction.  I have been told that this freeze is a feature 
  freeze and that we have the time to work on the UI.
  gst-player also has an embeddable component, and a nautilus view that
  uses it.  It used to take over all mime types but that was a mistake
  on our part, sorry ;)

  A screenshot of the player itself is at
http://thomas.apestaart.org/download/screenshots/gst-player.png
and an (old) screenshot of the nautilus-embedded player at
http://gstreamer.net/images/gst-nautilus-2.png

3) nautilus-media
  This is a module I created to add multimedia components and helper stuff
  to nautilus.
  Currently it has :
  - a thumbnailer for video, which can be used by the new thumbnailing
    code in nautilus
    currently is about 100 lines of code, gives video a fair chance to
    pick the 30th frame, and commits suicide after 3 seconds max ;)
  - a nearly-done audio view, that could serve as a replacement for
    the music view in nautilus's codebase.  

    The current one uses a 
    hacked-up version of mpg123 if I'm correct, and thus also only plays
    mp3 files.  It also concentrates on the concept of "one dir is an
    album" and offers an image for it and orders by track and so on.

    The new one I propose
    - works from the file manager standpoint, ie no "album" concept
    - plays (theoretically) all gstreamer-playable audio (and video if
      wanted), but I shall probably limit it to well-known formats for
      now (mp3/ogg/wav/flac)
    - is going to have a "scan" option that plays five secs of each,
      so you quickly find the file you're looking for

   You can see a screenshot of last weekend's version at
http://thomas.apestaart.org/download/screenshots/nautilus-media-view-3.png

   What will be added - though the timeframe is unclear, and depends on 
   your feedback ;) - is a video view, similar to the audio one, but
   with a small video preview window, and snorp's property pages for
   files in the icon or list view, based on mime/type.
   This would allow you to see relevant data on files and tracks inside
   files (e.g. oggs with multiple logical bitstreams) in the property
   page of media files.

   The focus for nautilus-media is on sensible features for a file 
   manager, not a playback application.  It is NOT supposed to be
   your audio or video player, it is supposed to help you quickly find,
   browse through, order, tag, and manage your multimedia files, which
   is becoming more and more important now that we have big HD's.

So, those are our propositions - please let us know what you think.

on behalf of the GStreamer team <g>
Thomas


The Dave/Dina Project : future TV today ! - http://davedina.apestaart.org/
<-*- thomas (dot) apestaart (dot) org -*->
When you can't trust yourself
trust someone else
<-*- thomas  (at) apestaart (dot) org -*->
URGent, the best radio on the Internet - 24/7 ! - http://urgent.rug.ac.be/