xine or gstream

[Valorie Zimmerman]

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 3:36 AM, O. Sinclair <o.sinclair at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/05/2011 11:35, Isak Enström wrote:
>>
>> On 27/05/11 09:00, O. Sinclair wrote:
>>>
>>> Does anyone know why gstream is supposed to be better or why it was
>>> chosen as backend in Natty 11.04? To me it seems like things that worked
>>> before in Kaffeine now does not, and that video playback is choppier
>>> than it was.
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>> Sinclair
>>>
>>
>> I think that the gstreamer backend was chosen because it can allow you
>> to search for missing codecs when trying to play a file that could
>> otherwise not be played. It might have something to do with consistency
>> between different *buntus also.
>>
>> I'm using the VLC backend myself (as is standard in PCLOS) and it's
>> working fine for me.
>>
>> a quick google found this, from:
>>
>> http://apachelog.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/kubuntu-11-04-sneak-peek-uds-cookie/
>>
>>
>> "QtWebKit is changing to a less sophisticated solution that hard-depends
>> on the GStreamer framework, consequently we will have to provide
>> GStreamer on the Kubuntu CD to support HTML5 audio/video in our current
>> default browser Rekonq. Additionally OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice on
>> Ubuntu also depends on GStreamer, so it only seems a logical option to
>> switch all of Kubuntu to GStreamer"
>>
> just to confuse things it seems they want to switch to vlc backend... I now
> have all 3 installed, will see what works best

Short answer is that xine is unmaintained now, while Phonon and
phonon-vlc and phonon-gst are all under heavy development. The Amarok
team has been betting on phonon-vlc, but in my experience, phonon-gst
is even better, even with all built from GIT.

Another advantage of Gstreamer is that ubuntu and gnome use it, thus
we might be coalescing around ONE backend, rather than the multiples
we've been suffering with for so long. Once pulseaudio improves a bit
more, sound in Linux might become not only excellent, but EASY.

Until that time, it's rather easy to have two or three backends, and
switch to what works best under the circumstances. Help out by
reporting bugs, or even showing up and helping the development teams.

Speed the day!

Valorie

-- 
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