[KDE] Which Phonon? Phonon backend - GStreamer or Xine?

[Adam Williamson]

On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 17:03 +0200, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
> Hi!
> We, KDE SIG, are considering which backend should be default for Phonon in 
> Fedora. Seems like it's not easy to agree on final decision @ KDE SIG meetings, 
> we'd like to summarize what's the problem, some backends facts (please correct 
> me, comment, add, etc.) and we'd like to hear comments from outer KDE SIG 
> universe, from you, Fedora developers & users, too. 
> 
> First question is which Phonon use - there are two actually - one is part of 
> Qt, one is part of KDE.
> 
> Upstream recommends building/packaging phonon from qt, and building/packaging 
> backends separately.
> 
> Some backends facts...
> 
> GStreamer backend facts:
> * now default one in Fedora (F12, rawhide)
> * GStreamer is Fedora's default multimedia framework
>  - better support from Fedora side? (PA, releases)
> * Phonon backend not as mature as Xine one
>  - missing functionality

It would help to note exactly what functionality is still missing with
the gstreamer backend. Last time I dealt with this issue was around KDE
4.0 / 4.1 in Mandriva, at which point the gstreamer backend still had
significant problems, such as being entirely unable to play audio CDs.
My take on this issue would depend to quite some extent on the
significance of the remaining functionality gap between gstreamer and
xine backends.

-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net