Re: Re: [gst-devel] Re: Common Opensource codec API

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003, Tuukka Toivonen wrote:

> On the other hand, if implementing good codec/format conversion plugin
> system, why not enhance the API slightly to allow also codecs with no
> input, just output, and codecs with only input, no outputs--or source and
> sinks. Enter Gstreamer.
>
> >> Yeah, and Gstreamer. Probably others too. Multiplicity is the problem.
> >Gstreamer isn't a codec api, it's a glue layer implented in C.
>
> Glue layer? Gstreamer is an API for multimedia pipelines consisting of
> source, format conversions and sink. And certainly format conversions
> include codecs too.
>
What you should all keep in mind is that it's horribly complicated to
write a plugin for a do-all system like GStreamer. I write them daily, so
I know that.
We're heavily moving to subclassing now so writing plugins becomes easier.

No codec developer wants to write something complicated. WHich is why
codec developers like Xiph or whoever don't ship plugins for $media
-{framework,player} but their own API. If I could implement a simple
decoder plugin in 100 lines of code, that'd be a simple API.

So instead of inventing some be-all-end-all you could invent something
that does what it should for 80% of the people and let the other 20%
invent their own APIs.

Benjamin