Hi,
I'm interested in applying for a GSoC project related to wine. I am looking at doing the DirectShow/Gstreamer idea that is listed in the wiki (http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode). From the idea description there are a number of factors that would make this an ideal solution. The description mentions the availability of legal codecs (from fluendo) plus the ability to use the codecs already exposed to gstreamer (ie. install a codec and native/wine applications instantly get support).
Recently GStreamer has added some pipeline elements targeted at integrating with other frameworks (appsrc/appsink) which allow sending data down a gstreamer pipeline and/or recieving it. Prior to these you had to write your own element (this wasn't too much work either depending on your needs and may still be preferred for more compatibility).
I am quite familiar with both C and GStreamer. I have never looked at DirectShow though from what i know they are similar in concept. GStreamer does have some DirectShow filters that allow it to use directshow elements inside GStreamer (on windows anyway).
My experience with wine has been limited to my own experiments. I've played around with audio drivers for wine. I wrote one that used GStreamer and later adjusted this to use pulseaudio instead. I never got time to clean them up to the point of submitting them.
I have a few questions in regard to this idea. Do you think this project would provide adequate work to occupy the SoC timeframe? I would have to learn DirectShow which I don't believe would be too difficult. I've worked with DirectSound/DirectX and would expect it to require a similiar amount of work. I've also spent a fair amount of time inside wine's source code looking into various bugs.
I welcome any comments, suggestions or idea related to this. I'd love any feedback so I know this is an idea that is wanted (i would like it...i use wine quite often) and so my application is as good as it can be.
Cheers, Trevor Davenport
Hi,
I'm interested in applying for a GSoC project related to wine. I am looking at doing the DirectShow/Gstreamer idea that is listed in the wiki (http://wiki.winehq.org/SummerOfCode). From the idea description there are a number of factors that would make this an ideal solution. The description mentions the availability of legal codecs (from fluendo) plus the ability to use the codecs already exposed to gstreamer (ie. install a codec and native/wine applications instantly get support).
Recently GStreamer has added some pipeline elements targeted at integrating with other frameworks (appsrc/appsink) which allow sending data down a gstreamer pipeline and/or recieving it. Prior to these you had to write your own element (this wasn't too much work either depending on your needs and may still be preferred for more compatibility).
I am quite familiar with both C and GStreamer. I have never looked at DirectShow though from what i know they are similar in concept. GStreamer does have some DirectShow filters that allow it to use directshow elements inside GStreamer (on windows anyway).
My experience with wine has been limited to my own experiments. I've played around with audio drivers for wine. I wrote one that used GStreamer and later adjusted this to use pulseaudio instead. I never got time to clean them up to the point of submitting them.
I have a few questions in regard to this idea. Do you think this project would provide adequate work to occupy the SoC timeframe? I would have to learn DirectShow which I don't believe would be too difficult. I've worked with DirectSound/DirectX and would expect it to require a similiar amount of work. I've also spent a fair amount of time inside wine's source code looking into various bugs.
I welcome any comments, suggestions or idea related to this. I'd love any feedback so I know this is an idea that is wanted (i would like it...i use wine quite often) and so my application is as good as it can be.
Cheers, Trevor Davenport
Hi Trevor,
I was the one who put this project suggestion on the wiki. Personally I think it should be a fine soc project. The project would be quite flexible. I expect that the project is too broad and initially should be confined to some widely used audio / video codecs and some widely used rendering methods (rgb / yuv). There will likely be bugs enough to fix ;)
Further I would define one or more apps you want to get working. If I remember correctly some games want to use mpeg or divx for movie playback (Warcraft III uses another codec). The ultimate app to get working using wine's quartz + gstreamer would of course be Windows Media Player ;) Though an open source media player like Media player classic which can use the same codecs is likely easier because you have the source.
Roderick
Hi
... mpeg or divx for movie playback (Warcraft III uses another codec).
That's actually not true. The movie files have been hacked to supply a false codec id (so the game would pull in a proper decoding backend) but it's actually fully DivX 5.0 compatible.
Warcraft had suplied a binary decoding-only library crafted by the people at DivX.com just for the purpose of the game.
Hi Roderick,
Hi Trevor,
I was the one who put this project suggestion on the wiki. Personally I think it should be a fine soc project. The project would be quite flexible. I expect that the project is too broad and initially should be confined to some widely used audio / video codecs and some widely used rendering methods (rgb / yuv). There will likely be bugs enough to fix ;)
Yeah, will definitely need to start with the basics, something simple for audio and video, such as mp3 or ogg for audio and theora or mpeg for video. I think time and the current quartz status would be the factors that would allow more to be done or not. If its possible, i think long term the best solution would be to have something that can dynamically create the gstreamer pipeline based on the the type of elements needed and the type of data and the gstreamer elements currently installed. GStreamer has a few elements that do this currently (decodebin/playbin). I need to look into the current directshow filters to see how difficult it has been for gstreamer to use current directshow filters on windows. My current feeling is that the hard part won't be getting the data in/out of gstreamer, but rather making it fit well into wine's quartz (and the work needed there to accomplish this, bugs, un-implemented, etc).
Further I would define one or more apps you want to get working. If I remember correctly some games want to use mpeg or divx for movie playback (Warcraft III uses another codec). The ultimate app to get working using wine's quartz + gstreamer would of course be Windows Media Player ;) Though an open source media player like Media player classic which can use the same codecs is likely easier because you have the source.
Yeah, I'd start with the simplest directshow program i can find, likely whatever simple app I can make that uses a few small elements and get that working. Then start adding tests or/and testing larger apps. Media Player Classic looks like a good candidate for a more complex programs. Thanks for mentioning it, I wasn't sure what i would use for this yet, but having that source would definitely help.
Cheers,
Trevor Davenport
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Roderick Colenbrander -
Trevor Davenport -
Wojciech 'arab' Arabczyk