On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 6:44 PM, Gene Heskett <gene.heskett@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
ffmpeg can do a lot that is not directly tied to a specific encumbered encoding. All libraries end up decoding the encumbered formats and using some sort of internal representation of the stream that is useful to work with as a raw data source. Video editting does not strictly require encumbered crap. If we had the video editting application such as kino in the distro...we could edit raw dv from camcorders into quite usable compress theora videos.
Sadly kino relies on ffmpg to do this. So I could rip out the encumbered bits from ffmpeg, include that as a package..and then package kino to use it. In fact I personally have such a package, but I haven't submitted any of it for inclusion..because including that sort of thing would mean that the users of that package could not add support for other codecs to use with kino. They'd be stuck with my crippled ffmpeg and thus a crippled kino. And it would be marginally harder for them to install a fully functional kino once my package was available. 3rd party repos which provide a fully functional ffmpeg and kino would have to bend over backwards to work around my 'crippled' ffmpeg stack. And as much as I want to make useful video production tools available in distro..I don't want to make work harder for the maintainers and users of those 3rd party repsotiories.
All of this because ffmpeg doesn't deal with plugin technology at any level. Unlike xine... unlike gstreamer.
infinitely better support...since ffmpeg has no support at all for runtime detection of codec support. c'mon even windows media player's framework lets you add codec support as plugins doesn't it?
Can gstreamer do what an offshore ffmpeg can?
ffmpeg can do a lot that is not directly tied to a specific encumbered encoding. All libraries end up decoding the encumbered formats and using some sort of internal representation of the stream that is useful to work with as a raw data source. Video editting does not strictly require encumbered crap. If we had the video editting application such as kino in the distro...we could edit raw dv from camcorders into quite usable compress theora videos.
Sadly kino relies on ffmpg to do this. So I could rip out the encumbered bits from ffmpeg, include that as a package..and then package kino to use it. In fact I personally have such a package, but I haven't submitted any of it for inclusion..because including that sort of thing would mean that the users of that package could not add support for other codecs to use with kino. They'd be stuck with my crippled ffmpeg and thus a crippled kino. And it would be marginally harder for them to install a fully functional kino once my package was available. 3rd party repos which provide a fully functional ffmpeg and kino would have to bend over backwards to work around my 'crippled' ffmpeg stack. And as much as I want to make useful video production tools available in distro..I don't want to make work harder for the maintainers and users of those 3rd party repsotiories.
All of this because ffmpeg doesn't deal with plugin technology at any level. Unlike xine... unlike gstreamer.
I think not, regardless of how
much better it can handle plugins, you would still be removing those bits
infinitely better support...since ffmpeg has no support at all for runtime detection of codec support. c'mon even windows media player's framework lets you add codec support as plugins doesn't it?
that actually make it work. Also, gstreamer, which might be somebodies pet
for all I know, seems to do weird things that require a tap on the reset
button here, so AFAIAC, its not ready for prime time either.
Whats a 'pitivi'?
I suggest you make an effort to read up on gstreamer and the applications which are attempting to make use of it. gst is already pretty deeply integrated into the default gnome application stack. You are probably making use of the framework without knowing it already.
If you want to work on a technical solution towards better video production tools in Fedora, gstreamer's pretty much the only framework that's flexible enough to build on with out running directly into legal issues to get anything in at all.
Pitivi is a simple non-linear editor that is in distro right now, but it needs some love. There are several of music sequencing applications based on gst, and there are some reasonably good video playback applictions out there, even video streaming and capturing apps... but the one thing that is really unexplored is video editing.
If all you want to do is get mad and shake your first in the air and march around in a little circle beating your chest at the fact that we are cautious about legal issues..including patently unreasonable things..like software patents...I guess I can't stop you..but you should know...you look really funny doing it... and its not helpful.
You want to be helpful? Work towards getting a mature video editting app on this list:
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/apps/
If we can get that done, that would go a long way.
-jef
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