Re: Arpi, if you are still reading the mcf-mplayer list ... check this out :

Hi,

> 
> As the guys are looking for a kind of Dshow equivalent for OBOS we thought
> we let you know there is maybe the chance to create some 'common' API or so
> .... is this ever interesting for Linux ?

not really
there are no standards (only some dead and never-used ones) for linux, 99%
of linux apps uses/emulates wide-spreaded formats of win/macos.

about the players - the most important things in a player are demxuers and
codecs. currently every player has its own interface for both, and there
was not any sucecss in getting some common one.
there are/were projects with such goal, like OMS or gstreamer, but they are
actually wrappers around other player's interfaces. the most popular/usable
players, like mplayer, xine, avifile has their own interface.
creating a common one is near to impossible, due to architectural/design
differences (like mplayer is singlethreaded while others aren't, direct
rendering, colorspace management, c vs c++ etc)

and, actually these interfaces are mostly wrappers around other,
codec-dependent extra interfaces, including dshow/vfw api, realvideo api,
libavcodec's api, xanim api etc...

the fact is that no one is interested in developing common interface, as it
will surely differ from his current interface and will mean feature/speed
loss or introducing high complexity.


A'rpi / Astral & ESP-team

--
Developer of MPlayer, the Movie Player for Linux - http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu