Re: G2.10 Module Proposal: Sound Juicer

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Fri, 2004-12-24 at 13:30 +0100, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > About these audio profiles: Even if sound-juicer uses the gstreamer (?)
> > audio profiles, surely sound-juicer is still the most sensible place for
> > the user to choose between encoding to ogg or mp3?
> 
> I don't think so.  As in the rest of GNOME, focus was on "have sensible
> defaults".  Most people have no need to switch between ogg and mp3.
> They want to rip their audio into a format that works for them.
> 
> GNOME promotes free formats.  Hence, for each of the profiles, free
> formats are currently chosen as default.  These profiles are task-
> oriented and satisfy what users basically do, without referencing actual
> implementation.
> 
> If someone has a need for both ogg and mp3, he has this need because,
> for example, he prefers free formats as well, but happens to have a
> player that can only do mp3.  To allow the user to do this, he would
> create an additional audio profile which would read "for my crap
> portable player" which would probably also have different quality
> settings.
> 
> This is how I envisioned the profiles to work, in accordance with other
> design ideas for the GNOME desktop in general.
> 
> When I have some more time I will write more of this down and add some
> of the small goodies I had planned for various bits and pieces, like,
> say, "convert set of audio files to a profile from in nautilus".
> 
> > I hope that the main purpose of the audio profiles is that there is at
> > least one working audio profile that applications can use instead of
> > guessing at sensible defaults. And I hope that we don't expect most people
> > to change the audio profiles, or add new profiles.
> 
> Exactly.  There are three sensible default profiles, which cover all
> common use cases.
> 
> > Also, I can imagine that there might be two audio profiles for something
> > like "normal" and "quiet", with everything but the volume being the same.
> 
> I'm not following what you mean her by "normal" and "quiet" ?
> 
> > But I'd be annoyed if I had to change other stuff (such as switching mp3
> > to ogg) twice (in each profile).
> 
> Think about the use cases for switching the codec, or why you would even
> care in the first place in a perfect desktop.  What are they ? Give me
> something to work with.
> 
> >  This would leave room for a lot of
> > strange effects. I'd wonder why sound-juicer generates oggs when my
> > computer is quiet, but mp3s when its loud.
> 
> I guess I'm not following this part.  There's currently no "loud" or
> "quiet" audio profile and I'm not sure what you would have it do.

I had imagined that an audio profile contained settings for stuff like
volume as well. But if it's just for encoding formats/quality then that
makes it simple. I hope you find the time to do some documentation.

-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com