Totem Chapters Plugin - Weekly Report 9

[Alexander Saprykin <xelfium gmail com>]

Hey guys,

here is weekly report #9 (see text version below):
http://axsaprykin.blogspot.com/2010/07/gsoc-weekly-code-report-9.html

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       text version
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Heat. heat, heat... That was the most popular topic for the
discussions this week in Russia. Yeah, again and again. The rain is
most welcomed today, I think. There is a more terrible weather in the
Moscow, BBC reports quite well the current situation. It's time for
BBQs and swimming now :) Aside from weather, I'm a bit late with my
report due to some things I wanted to be finished. And now I can tell
about what I was working for during this week.

First of all, I was improving GstToc support in GStreamer. I created a
repository[0] instead of posting a batch of patches to bugzilla again,
so everyone can test it without much efforts. I added more sanity
checks for TOC's structure during serialization/deserialization
process: there shouldn't be mixed chapters and editions at the same
level of the TOC 'cause it makes no sense. Also I added a bit more
tests for GstToc to cover this improvement. Unit testing helped me a
lot while I was making those changes in the GstToc.

Finally, I have finished chapters support in Matroska element
including demuxer and muxer support with per-chapter/edition tags.
This work is based on GstToc. What does it mean? Well, now
applications can handle Matroska chapters and navigate through the
file using them. With all the tags related to the TOC. That's one of
the cool features I'm going to implement in my Totem chapters plugin
in case of successful acceptance of the GStreamer's GstToc patches.
Also from now you will not lose chapters inside Matroska files while
remuxing them. All the chapters will be handled by the muxer and saved
properly. Just tested it with VLC — works quite well. I've already
sent patch for Matroska element to bugzilla. And you can grab
gst-plugins-good branch with Matroska chapters support in my
repository[1].

I worked a bit on my Totem chapters plugin (just some minor fixes),
too. It's waiting for the GstToc support :) Now I'm waiting for
reviews on my GStreamer patches to decide in which way I'll be moving
next week. Sebastian said that GUADEC is a nice place to do it :)
Well, I'm really sad that I couldn't go GUADEC this year :( I hope all
you guys have a good time there! Last week my planning was quite
accurate and I did all the things I wanted to do (and a bit more, but
with report delaying). I didn't think that debugging and testing can
take so much time, though.

Next week... For now, I'm really don't know what to do next, 'cause my
work depends on GstToc features. It's August almost there and it's a
time for some final touches on my GSoC project, I think. So, what do I
need to do? First of all I need to integrate my Totem chapters plugin
into the master branch, but it will have more sense with GstToc
support in it. That's why my nearest target will be to get GstToc
accepted. After that I can implement it in my chapters plugin. Till
that I will be looking for other GStreamer elements in which I can
implement GstToc support (not sure I will have a time during GSoC, but
I have plans to make my plugin more valuable after GSoC). Also I will
be hacking Totem's backend a bit to play around with GstToc features.
See you next week :)

======================
[0] git gitorious org:gstreamer-chapters/gstreamer-core.git
[1] git gitorious org:gstreamer-chapters/gstreamer-good.git

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      git short log
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commit 993926ea99706281be9f4e5e8f0a63ae13524266
Author: Alexander Saprykin <xelfium gmail com>
Date:   Tue Jul 27 02:41:43 2010 +0400

    Update GstToc support

    More sanity checks on GstToc serializing/deserializing
    Updat docs
    Add more GstToc tests


commit 8aa96de2c970555e43fbd5040bfdeddfd942ea33
Author: Alexander Saprykin <xelfium gmail com>
Date:   Tue Jul 27 02:11:33 2010 +0400

    matroska: Full chapters support

    matroskademux: Add per-chapters/editions tags
    matroskamux: Add chapters support using GstToc
    matroskamux: Add per-chapters/editions tags


commit 65d36f372b24e4304e8cf0b9133d47546ea3b7bc
Author: Alexander Saprykin <xelfium gmail com>
Date:   Thu Jul 22 10:28:51 2010 +0400

    Add initial TOC support (chapters) to the matroska muxer