Re: My take on Totem and GStreamer

[Ronald Bultje <rbultje ronald bitfreak net>]

Hey Jeff,

On Thu, 2003-05-29 at 15:50, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> ... and fully supporting error feedback, video/audio syncing, etc., etc.
> This is the biggest reason why I'm iffy about shipping a xine-based Totem,
> but we may end up having to consider it for 2.6 anyway.

We'll need to release a 0.6.2 for that to work, but all that error
reporting stuff is solved in our current CVS (yes, we'll try to release
0.6.2 soon). I don't know about any A/V sync issues. The only real issue
(imo) is that we're missing a lot of "exotic" playback formats.

The real thing that matters here is that Gnome is giving a strong signal
to external communities, like video codec companies or whatever, about
the media framework to go with. So if $random_company or $random_person
suddenly wants to make plugins for $random_format so the "Gnome Media
Player" can play back $random_format, they'll make Xine plugins, and
everyone will be happy.

...except for us (=Gst developers), because we'll still miss all these
exotic formats and we'll go around in a nice circle for Gnome-2.6 again.
;).

Point being that a smooth transition from Xine to GStreamer (or the
other way around, for the sake of the argument) isn't as simple as it
seems, and you might rather want to go with one or the other instead of
choosing one for now and the other for later.

Ronald

PS I do like your beer @ guadec idea. ;).

-- 
Ronald Bultje <rbultje ronald bitfreak net>