My take on Totem and GStreamer

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

So,

I believe that totem is the absolute best media player available for GNOME,
and there is no doubt that it should be added to the desktop release at some
stage.

It provides full-featured video capabilities, and supports audio for casual
listening (rather than music library management, etc). IMHO, this summarises
the greatest common factor of media player use cases amongst desktop users.
Alongside excellent music library management software such as Rhythmbox [1],
we have all bases thoroughly covered.

However, it is unlikely that it will make it into 2.4 for the following
reasons:

  - It currently uses Xine to achieve full functionality and performance

  - It is highly unlikely that the GStreamer backend will be working to a
    similar degree by feature freeze, or even by release (unless someone
    else pitches in and does the libgstplay and gstreamer work required)

  - We have "blessed" GStreamer by adding it to the desktop release in 2.2,
    and it makes a modicum of sense to not ship two multimedia backends

To me, that leaves us with three options:

  1) Don't include totem in the release at all until all of the GStreamer
  stuff is ready for it. This means that we won't have a media player in our
  desktop release for 2.4.

  2) Make sure someone commits to having totem and the GStreamer bits all
  working for 2.4. This means we'll most likely have a media player in 2.4,
  and it will be based on the "blessed" multimedia framework.

  3) Include Totem using the Xine backend for now, and use the GStreamer
  backend when it matures. This means that a single module in our release
  would depend on Xine.

So, options 2 and 3 are the most interesting, because option one just flat
out sucks. We might have to live with it, but the other options are there,
so let's see how they pan out.

Bastien has said that he is not interested in getting the GStreamer backend
working in the 2.4 timeframe. I can understand this, because, from his point
of view (and, I'm sure, the point of view of his users), he already has a
full-featured media player that works very well. It doesn't make a lot of
sense to go porting it to another backend that (thus far) is not as capable.

So, if option 2 was going to be viable, I believe that an interested person
(possibly but not necessarily from the GStreamer project) would have to get
this going. It occurs to me that, if the GStreamer guys really want to show
that GStreamer is *the* multimedia framework to satisfy GNOME's needs, then
perhaps they could concentrate on this in the 2.4 timeframe. As it stands,
GStreamer doesn't capably satisfy GNOME's needs (though I have no doubt that
it has the capacity to when these issues are resolved).

Option 3 is unattractive for a number of reasons. Firstly, we have already
shipped GStreamer in our desktop release (essentially committing to it), so
it would not make sense to add another media framework. It would negatively
impact GStreamer progress, testing and bugfixing, and may have an impact on
integration issues. Distributions may be less inclined to ship Xine due to
patent issues (they'd have to disable certain plugins, and even modify the
"pristine source" because they can't distribute it). I'm told that the Xine
dudes would be happy to split out the difficult plugins and source, though.
I haven't investigated portability problems, but that may come into play. :)

That said, the distribution issues could be dealt with, and it will give us
a media player that works right now.

Of the two, I think the majority of people would prefer option 2, because it
proves the multimedia library that we've already "blessed", and it doesn't
introduce another dependency. Thus far, no one has committed to it, however.

Those are my (frank and open, though not meant to be taken personally or as
flamage) thoughts, please discuss. :-)

- Jeff

[1] Which, as it happens, I don't think should be in the desktop release (I
don't think music library management is a 'greatest common factor' feature)
but should be blessed in an official GNOME release of sorts.

-- 
GU4DEC: June 16th-18th in Dublin, Ireland             http://www.guadec.org/
 
      "And, most importantly, we now have modules named 'fontilus' and
        'themus' -- the two founders of GROME." - Jonathon Blandford