Totem any time soon?

[Michael T. Richter]

On Tue, 2006-21-02 at 21:42 -0500, Lee Revell wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-02-22 at 10:33 +0800, Michael T. Richter wrote:
> > I agree with this sentiment.  Totem-gstreamer just failed to play most
> > of my video outright.  Switching to Totem-xine widened the playable
> > files, but led to bizarre errors like "audio device is busy" when
> > encountering AC3 audio.  Using xine/gxine/whatever I can play all of
> > my video files--even the AC3-encoded ones--with automagic downmixing
> > to stereo where necessary, etc. 

> Why is this a bizarre error - you have a non-hardware-mixing sound card
> and the sound server is blocking the audio device, so only apps that use
> the sound server can output audio.

This is a bizarre error because:
1) End-users know nothing about
mixingsoundcardsserversaudiodevicesencodings.  They know they have a
file they want to play, that it plays under Windows and (if they're
lucky or at least persistent) that it plays under Linux using xine or
gxine, but it doesn't play under totem (either as totem-gstreamer or
totem-xine).

2) It is a completely useless error message.  Having totem claim that
the sound card is busy while every other application in the known
universe is merrily playing sound -- including other applications
playing the same file! -- makes the claim that the sound card is busy
somewhat suspicious.  (It also provides no clues on how to go about
solving the error condition; a condition that only it reports, mind.)

3) Did I mention yet that only totem reports this error?  That everybody
else seems to have figured out how to play despite me not having a
non-downmixing sound card?

Totem is a bad choice from the end-user experience perspective.  It puts
a bad face on itself, on Ubuntu and, by extension on all of Linux
because end-users rarely know the OS from a hole in the ground, not to
mention subtle distinctions between software vs. hardware mixing, sound
servers, front- and back-ends or whatever else is in the dogpile that
leads to the error message.  The message an end-user receives if Totem
is the default is "Linux sucks" not "Oh, I have to manipulate these
million-or-so files just the right way to do things that Just Work under
Windows.".  If it's a more sophisticated user "Linux sucks" moves over
to "Totem sucks" -- but the conclusion is still the same: Totem is a bad
choice as a default video application in Ubuntu.

--
Michael T. Richter
Email: ttmrichter at gmail.com, mtr1966 at hotpop.com
MSN: ttmrichter at hotmail.com, mtr1966 at hotmail.com; YIM:
michael_richter_1966; AIM: YanJiahua1966; ICQ: 241960658; Jabber:
mtr1966 at jabber.cn
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