On 15 Mar 2006, at 20:36, Brian Cameron wrote: > > Calum: > > I wanted to discuss the spec for the "Sound & Video" section. As you > highlight, this section is bewildering in its duplicated choices. > Here's my perspective on what we should be doing and details about > the programs. > > 1) We probably don't need to include Java Media Player in the menu > anymore. I believe that realplay does everything that JMP can > do and more.
I'd be happy if that was the case (although I'm not convinced that it is-- I think JMP can play some Quicktime files for example, which RP can't AFAIK). I think Leo is going to talk to you about this soon, if she hasn't already... she's looking for a definitive list of which of our media players can handle which codecs, wrt to which licenses we actually have. (E.g. I know Real Player /can/ play pretty much anything with access to the relevant plugins, but I didn't know off-hand which ones we were licensed to distribute for use with it.) > > 2) We probably do not want to ship vu-meter at all. Note that this > volume meter only works with esd, and aside from desktop sounds > all GNOME media programs use gstreamer talking directly to the > sunaudio device rather than esd. So this vumeter isn't really > very useful. Yep, they're already gone in the latest draft (which I haven't mirrored externally to gnome.org yet, sorry... will do that today). > > 3) I think Real Media allows users to play CD's. Therefore, we > probably don't want gnome-cd in the menu. It isn't a very > good CD player anyway. Hmm, I don't think Real Player can actually do that (at least not on Solaris)... I think you might need Real Player Plus or Real Jukebox to do that, which we don't ship. If Jamboree can't play CDs either, that might be a reason to consider rhythmbox instead... see my comment about that below. > 4) It's annoying that we include Audio Control and "Volume Control". > We probably need to evaluate these two from a functionality > and accessibility perspective and figure out which one to > ship. sdtaudiocontrol uses Java and gnome-volume-control uses > GTK+ so they both should be accessible. Yep, I've dropped gnome-volume-control from the latest draft too, as it doesn't currently offer as much control as sdtaudiocontrol on Solaris boxes AFAICT. > > 5) We probably do want to include totem just because some users > may want to download Fluendo DVD, MPEG4, WindowsMedia, etc. > plugins and this tool therefore will allow people to play > some media types unsupported by Real. > > 6) We may want to consider including Jamboree. It is a program > that lets you manage playlists of audiofiles, much like > iTunes does. Jamboree does not interact with the CD player, > but for usrs who have a hard drive full of sound files, > Jamboree makes it possible to jukebox your audio. Have you any thoughts on why Jamboree might be preferable to rhythmbox (which we don't currently ship either)? Their UIs look practically identical (i.e. they both copied iTunes), but from what little I know about Jamboree so far, rhythmbox sounds like it does more (e.g. CD player, streaming radio stations, iPod connectivity). > I added > Jamboree to the extra-specs so you can build it and see how > it works. Let me know if you think this should be added. > One hassle is that Jamboree uses the gdmb (GNU Database) > interfaces and we'll probably have to hack Jamboree to use > Berkely DB instead if we want to ship this. That shouldn't > be too much work, though. Thanks, I'll try and have a play with it. > 7) We should not ship gnome-sound-recorder unless we get around > to writing a GStreamer 0.10 SunAudio record plugin. There > currently is no record plugin for Solaris, so you can't > record anyway. We can add this back (since it is the only > program that allows you to record audio) if we do this. Ok, I'll note that in the spec and remove it for now. > Hope this helps... Yep, thanks! Cheeri, Calum. -- CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer Sun Microsystems Ireland mailto:calum.benson at sun.com Java Desktop System Team http://blogs.sun.com/calum +353 1 819 9771 Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems
