Re: [Nautilus-list] Audio preview

[Ryan Muldoon <rpmuldoon students wisc edu>]

On 23 Mar 2001 16:48:35 -0800, Gene Z. Ragan wrote:
> Comrades,
> 
> I have spent the last couple of days reworking the way that we handle
audio previewing.
> 
> I have done this for a few reasons. The first is that we are getting
several bugs about run away processes causing audio preview to continue
even after icon prelight has ended. Another issue is the possible
absence of SOX, play and mpg123 libraries and executables. We currently
hard code the name of play and mpg123 into the siurce code. The final
issue is the lack of extensibility in our current design. We are not
well equipped to handle new audio file formats.
> 
> In order to address all of these issues, I have created a threaded
audio playback mechanism. This would require nautilus to use the
audiofile library in gnome cvs.  This library is based on the SGI audio
file library and is pretty decent. In the absence of a real media
architecture in gnome, this library is a good stand in.  The code itself
could easily be modified to use a different audio library and sound
output should the need arise.
> 
> A short term drawback is that we would lose previewing of mp3 files.
This would be easy to fix. I could quickly submit a module to the
audiofile library to handle the parsing of mp3 files.  This small
drawback is pretty minor in terms of the gains we would get form using a
library as opposed to hardcoded application names.
> 
> Does anyone have any feedback or suggestions?
> 
This sounds like an excellent idea.  Is something like gstreamer a
possible multimedia framework for dealing with general media
views/previews?  From what I can see, it looks like a pretty flexible
framework for solving these problems.  But I don't know if it is
overkill or not mature enough for general use by nautilus.  An
additional advantage to using gstreamer is that it will hopefully become
a solid general-purpose multimedia framework.....support from nautilus
might help it gain a userbase, which would be mutually beneficial, as
nautilus would get more views/previews for free.  But I could be way off
base. ;-)


    --Ryan