F8(1) vs multimedia production(0)

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 6:44 PM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett at verizon.net>wrote:

> Can gstreamer do what an offshore ffmpeg can?


ffmpeg can do a lot that is not directly tied to a specific encumbered
encoding. All libraries end up decoding the encumbered formats and using
some sort of internal representation of the stream that is useful to work
with as a raw data source.  Video editting does not strictly require
encumbered crap.  If we had the video editting application such as kino in
the distro...we could edit raw dv from camcorders into quite usable compress
theora videos.

Sadly kino relies on ffmpg to do this. So I could rip out the encumbered
bits from ffmpeg, include that as a package..and then package kino to use
it. In fact I personally have such a package, but I haven't submitted any of
it for inclusion..because including that sort of thing would mean that the
users of that package could not add support for other codecs to use with
kino. They'd be stuck with my crippled ffmpeg and thus a crippled kino.  And
it would be marginally harder for them to install a fully functional kino
once my package was available. 3rd party repos which provide a fully
functional ffmpeg and kino would have to bend over backwards to work around
my 'crippled' ffmpeg stack. And as much as I want to make useful video
production tools available in distro..I don't want to make work harder for
the maintainers and users of those 3rd party repsotiories.

All of this because ffmpeg doesn't deal with plugin technology at any level.
Unlike xine... unlike gstreamer.


> I think not, regardless of how
> much better it can handle plugins, you would still be removing those bits


infinitely better support...since ffmpeg has no support at all for runtime
detection of codec support.  c'mon even windows media player's framework
lets you add codec support as plugins doesn't it?


>
> that actually make it work.  Also, gstreamer, which might be somebodies pet
> for all I know, seems to do weird things that require a tap on the reset
> button here, so AFAIAC, its not ready for prime time either.
>
> Whats a 'pitivi'?
>

I suggest you make an effort to read up on gstreamer and the applications
which are attempting to make use of it.  gst is already pretty deeply
integrated into the default gnome application stack. You are probably making
use of the framework without knowing it already.

If you want to work on a technical solution towards better video production
tools in Fedora, gstreamer's pretty much the only framework that's flexible
enough to build on with out running directly into legal issues to get
anything in at all.

Pitivi is a simple non-linear editor that is in distro right now, but it
needs some love.  There are several of music sequencing applications based
on gst, and there are some reasonably good video playback applictions out
there, even video streaming and capturing apps... but the one thing that is
really unexplored is video editing.

If all you want to do is get mad and shake your first in the air and march
around in a little circle beating your chest at the fact that we are
cautious about legal issues..including patently unreasonable things..like
software patents...I guess I can't stop you..but you should know...you look
really funny doing it... and its not helpful.

You want to be helpful? Work towards getting a mature video editting app on
this list:
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/apps/

If we can get that done, that would go a long way.

-jef
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