GStreamer 'Toes Wide Open' 0.4.2 released

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus linuxrising org>]

GStreamer "Toes Wide Open" 0.4.2 released

The GStreamer team is happy to announce another release of the GStreamer
streaming-media framework. This release has mainly focused on code
clean-up and rounding out of the features. Large chunks of GStreamer are
API stable at this point.

You find source and binary download instructions here:
http://www.gstreamer.net/releases/0.4.2/

Our development currently focus on the following items:

    * Increase stability and portability of scheduler
    * Add more video editing specific plugins
    * Improve plugins currently used by existing applications
    * Create language bindings

We are starting to have a really nice collection of applications under
development using GStreamer. If you are looking for something specific
check out our applications status page at:
http://www.gstreamer.net/status/?category=2

Updates and Enhancements
General

    * First release made of the Graphical Pipeline Editor, getting to be
	very stable and well working (new maintainer needed).
    * License field added to factory details field.
    * Further work on Language bindings, with Web pages set up
	describing them
    * gst_caps_check_compatability -> gst_caps_is_always_compatible API
	change.
    * Designing interactive plugins architecture begun.
    * Cleanups for SPEC files for use with Red Hat 8
    * GConf keys provided and extended to set input sources
    * Converted FAQ to docbook and added it to build
    * use G_{BEGIN,END}_DECLS in core (plugins to follow)

Core

Plug-ins

    * FLAC plugin updated to work with 1.0.4 release
    * Metadata support and many fixes for Ogg Vorbis plugin
    * Lots of fixes to v4l plugin
    * New wavencoder plugin
    * New shoutcast2 plugin
    * Mad plugin now also collects id3 metadata
    * Lots of minor fixes, code cleanups and updates for new versions of
	underlying libraries.
    * Video editing plugins added
    * Snapshot plugin part of default build
    * Major updates to v4l plugin
    * Major updates to avimux plugin
    * New Mpegmuxer plugin
    * Many fixes to cdparanoia plugin
    * Playback of SVCD fixed
    * Moved generic gstplay library from gst-player into gst-plugins
    * Added first cut of new ASF demuxer (still not working)

Known Issues

GStreamer currently ships with schedulers based on two cothread
packages. The 'omega' cothread package is the one we have been shipping
for a long time now and is still the default in this release. There are
however some limitations and thread-related bugs in the omega scheduler.
These limitations are not present in the 'wingo' schedulers, but
unfortunately it does not work with i686 glibc at this time due to
differences in the way threads are handled compared to other
architectures, including i386. A new (third) scheduler (that doesn't use
cothreads) is being developed.

As for the bugs in the 'omega' schedulers, we did not feel they
warranted not releasing 0.4.2 as they are rather obscure. For instance
if you are using Rhythmbox you will need to be playing over 500 songs
nonstop to trigger it. You can choose a different scheduler by passing
--scheduler=(name) to any GStreamer application.

Wim Taymans has started work on a new scheduler. The first part is
already in CVS, but it will probably still be some months before it is
ready.

GStreamer Homepage

More details on these features can be found on the project's website,
http://gstreamer.net/.

Support and Bugs

We use Gnome's Bugzilla for bug reports and feature requests. The
"product name" is GStreamer (capital G). Please do the following before
writing a bug report :

gst-feedback &> feedback 2>&1

and attach the file "feedback" to your bug report, so that we have some
information useful in the debugging process.

Developers

GStreamer is hosted on SourceForge. All code is in CVS and can be
checked out from there. Interested developers of the core library,
plug-ins, and applications should subscribe to the gstreamer-devel list.
If there is sufficient interest we will create more lists as necessary.

We are still looking for people with access to Solaris, HP-UX, Irix and
True64 that would be willing to try building and testing GStreamer.
Patches fixing such problems are also more than welcome.

Contributors to this release:

Patches to the core of Gstreamer

    * Wim Taymans <wim.taymans(AT)chello.be>
    * Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas(AT)apestaart.org>
    * David I. Lehn <dlehn(AT)vt.edu>

Plugins and Sample Applications

    * Ronald Bultje <rbultje(AT)ronald.bitfreak.net>
    * Andy Wingo <wingo(AT)pobox.com>
    * Steve Baker <stevebaker_org(AT)yahoo.co.uk>
    * Cameron Hutchison <camh(AT)xdna.net>
    * Zeeshan Ali Khattak <zak147(AT)yahoo.com>
    * David Schleef <ds(AT)schleef.org>
    * Colin Walters <walters(AT)gnu.org>
    * Iain Holmes <iain(AT)prettypeople.org>
    * Pedro Côrte-Real <typo(AT)netcabo.pt>
    * Jérémy Simon <jsimon13(AT)yahoo.fr>
    * Julien Moutte <jmoutte(AT)electronic-group.com>
    * Owen Fraser-Green <owen(AT)discobabe.net>

Misc

    * Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus(AT)gnome.org>
    * Tim Jansen <tim.jansen(AT)kde.org>
    * Leif Morgan Johnson <lmjohns3(AT)eos.ncsu.edu>
    * Martin Schulze <>
    * Christian Meyer <chrisime(AT)gnome.org>
    * Alp Toker <pokey(AT)linuxmail.org>