Wednesday, 6 May 2009

An era comes to an end

I'm not changing jobs, or getting married, it's all a bit more important than that.

Totem's xine-lib backend is now gone in git master, for GNOME 2.28.

The GStreamer boys have come forward, fixed a lot of bugs, and implemented new features, which means that the GStreamer backend was getting held back by the features of the xine-lib backend.

Oh, and before people start complaining:
  • this is only in the development branch for now
  • if you haven't filed a bug about whatever problem the GStreamer backend caused for you, you're not allowed to complain
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17 comments:

  1. Philip6 May 2009 at 16:35

    Great success!

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  2. Anonymous6 May 2009 at 16:45

    The xine-lib backend has not been really as usable as the GStreamer one for several releases now, so I find this logical.

    Does this correspond to a move to playbin2 ? AIUI there is finally support for AC3 passthrough, which was one of the biggest issues with GStreamer.

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  3. Anonymous6 May 2009 at 17:13

    Replying to myself; this is the case, looking at the commit logs.

    Great! I hope totem will rock more than ever.

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  4. oliver6 May 2009 at 17:23

    Kudos to the Totem and Gstreamer devs! I noticed that in latest Ubuntu release, Totem-GStreamer also supports DVD menus and stuff - thanks for the great work!

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  5. Martin6 May 2009 at 17:26

    Totem with gstreamer backend allows me to see only the first frame of video from Swedish television on the web. With the xinelib backend I can view whole videos. I guess one frame is better than none atleast. (That's bug #69564 from 2006 btw.)

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  6. Bastien Nocera6 May 2009 at 17:38

    Martin, wrong bug number, unless you're referring to a problem with Midnight Commander...

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  7. Anonymous6 May 2009 at 17:56

    as long as AC3 passthrough will work some time...

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  8. Martin6 May 2009 at 18:16

    Woops, that was the launchpad bug. I guess there might not be an upstream bug report so I retract my complaint. ;) (It's still not working though.) Anyhow, I think settling on a single back-end is a good idea.

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  9. Sven6 May 2009 at 18:30

    Martin, I think that's bug #401173, which I reported about two years ago.

    Not exactly a deal breaker for me, but it would be nice if it worked.

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  10. AndyFitz6 May 2009 at 18:55

    fuckyeah bastien. the future is now!

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  11. Martin6 May 2009 at 19:13

    Sven, looks like the same bug. I didn't find your report when I searched so now I have mistakenly generated some spam on bugzilla by creating a duplicate.

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  12. Unknown7 May 2009 at 07:30

    Congrats to Gstreamer devs and thanks for xine backend for serving us for so long!

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  13. Anonymous7 May 2009 at 09:48

    @Martin - have you tried gst-launch with playbin2? For me (polish TV streams) playbin2 solves the first-frame-only problem.

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  14. Martin7 May 2009 at 10:10

    Michal, the bug I experienced is solved with asfdemux from git. #401173 was recently closed and I just verified that it works for me too.

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  15. Sven7 May 2009 at 13:12

    BTW, is there any word on the status of support for external subpicture subtitles (VobSub) in GStreamer?

    Bug #350311 has been resolved, but I still haven't got this to work in Totem.

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  16. Unknown7 May 2009 at 16:35

    How can I enable deinterlace for example for dvd videos with totem-gstreamer? with totem-xine it's easy accessible in the menus.
    however, totem-gstreamer has done very big steps forward.

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  17. Anonymous9 May 2009 at 19:47

    So, does that mean we finally get DVD playback in totem-gstreamer now? (saying this as a gstreamer fan, by the way; I don't use totem xine, but lots of others do)

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