On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 3:24 AM, Pierre Schmitz <pierre@archlinux.de> wrote:
In short: I have tested several use cases and gstreamer seems not to be usable. So Id' like to disable support for it in upcoming phonon releases.
My problems with gstreamer: * graphical glitches when playing some (most) mpeg files * sometimes no sound * bad image quality (no deinterlacing?) * plugins depend on gnome * it plays some videos with wrong aspect ratio * does not seem to be a phonon problem; I had the same problems with totem; using totem-xine fixed those.
So, future versions of phonon will only have the xine-backend enabled. Maybe I'll provide other backends when we have the ability to split packages.
If you think this is a bad idea, let me know.
I've always hated gstreamer. I used to do a lot of work with DirectShow on Win32, which involved this whole audio-video pipeline setup crap. I remember saying "this is terrible. thank god that linux is much easier in this aspect". A little bit later, gstreamer came out, which does the same sort of stuff as DirectShow did. So, rant aside, I am not a phonon user, but I support removal of crappy software 8)