Kaiwai:
Oh, another thing to consider. Remember that Fluendo's plugins only
work with GStreamer 0.10. Unfortunately GStreamer 0.10 is *not*
compatible with GStreamer 0.8, which is what we ship on Solaris 10. If
there is a desire to support Fluendo's advanced plugins on Solaris 10,
then it would be necessary to backport the GStreamer 0.10 engine back to
Solaris 10.
This would be a bit of work, but not impossible, if marketing felt
it was desirable. Or, perhaps, it makes more sense to just focus on
the future and make the next release of Solaris (or the Developer
Express releases) the place where Solaris becomes media savvy?
Brian
The JDS multimedia team has the following FAQ which discusses the
different media programs on Solaris and their functionality. You
might find this useful:
http://sceri.prc.sun.com/wiki//index.php/RealPlayer_Supportted_file_type#FAQ
Ignore the fact that the URL indicates it is RealPlayer specific. It
also discusses other programs, such as GStreamer and JMP (Java Media
Player).
From your email, it sounds like you are considering contacting Fluendo
and making some deals with them. If so, perhaps you and I should talk
(or trade emails) becuase I have been the main point-person in our
discussions with them so far. For example, I was the person who
arranged to provide them with a Sparc machine so that they can build
their proprietary WMA/WMV plugins for the Sparc platform (their NDA
agreement with Microsoft requires that only Fluendo employees can
actually build the code).
It would probably be good to avoid covering old ground with them, so
you should probably be aware of what has been discussed with them so
far.
- We have had discussions with them about purchasing WMA, WMV, MPEG2,
and MPEG4 licenses. They can sell the licenses per-user or a full
license allowing us to ship the plugins with all Solaris
distributions. We have also had similar discussions with Real.
They also offer the same plugins for similar prices.
These discussions have always broken down because Sun doesn't want
to pay the money for the full license. The main reason seems to be
that only a subset of Solaris users really use media, and it doesn't
make sense to increase the cost of Solaris for all users when only
a subset benefit. It would probably be much cheaper for Sun to buy
a batch of per-user licenses and provide them in the download
center for registered users (either for free or for a small fee -
much cheaper than the current price at the Fluendo store). But this
option seems to never get much consideration.
The decision of whether it makes more sense to buy Real or GStreamer
plugins has been a difficult one for many people to get their head
around. Real seems able to offer the plugins at a slightly cheaper
price, but remember that MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 are used in DVD formats
so any future DVD solution would need access to these plugins to
play most common DVD's. GStreamer seems to be in a better situation
to provide a DVD player, but I would imagine that we could negotiate
with Real to offer a DVD solution if we wanted.
Note that RealPlayer is a playback only tool while GStreamer supports
playback, recording and media conversion. So, it might make more
sense to support GStreamer since there is more opportunity for
supporting more types of media usage.
- Fluendo's MPEG2 and MPEG4 plugins don't yet work on Solaris. This
is because their plugins currently use the IPP (Intel Performance
Primitives) library. Talking with the mediaLib team, it would take
a "few months" to convert these plugins to using mediaLib or Solaris
native code. Fluendo has told us that if their current WMA/WMV
Solaris plugins sell well enough, they will consider doing the work
to port the MPEG2 and MPEG4 plugins to Solaris. If we want the
plugins available sooner, they suggest we help with funding (which
could include wanting to purchase a site license or enough per-user
licenses). Note these plugins will be necessary for any DVD solution
to work.
I've been working with the mediaLib team on an alternative solution.
They already have MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 code that works with mediaLib
that we can probably share with Fluendo and allow them to resell.
I'm currently working with the mediaLib team to see if this can
be worked out. If so, we can avoid needing to wait for them to
port, and avoid having to fund anything.
- I think a MP3 encoding plugin would also be a big nice-to-have.
They currently don't offer such a solution, and Solaris doesn't allow
you to encode to MP3. I don't suspect WMV encoding is something
that we really need to pursue right now since there aren't really
any good video creation tools available yet - though hopefully this
might change over time. Also, is WMA encoding really something we
need? Do many people really create their own WMA files? I'd say
MP3 encoding is probably the one audio encoder that we are missing
that would be nice to have.
Not sure if this really relates to your plans, but if you are going to
talk to Fluendo, perhaps it's good for you to be aware of what we've
been doing with them so far? If you want to talk further, please just
let me know.
Brian
On 31/03/07, *Kaiwai Gardiner* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
Hi,
Just having a look around; along with hardware support, I
thought it
would be best to help provide a 'link database' to link up customer
needs to solutions that exist for Solaris.
Case in point, https://shop.fluendo.com/ who sell currently
support
for WMA/WMV/Mp3 playback for Solaris x86/SPARC - and from what I
understand, the compresssion side of the equation will be arriving
soon.
Not only will this help first time users in regars to helping
them
resolve support issues relating to multimedia, it'll also provide a
good platform in which Solaris solution provides can directly
contact customers and vice versa, without needing to navigate the
beaucracy that is Sun - if this provides free publicitly, hopefully
it'll entice more vendors to come on board and provide Solaris
editions of their software.
What does everyone else thing?
Matt
Just a follow up to this; before I go ahead and do anything, I'm
looking at communicating with Fluendo and OpenSound to see if some
sort of "OpenSolaris Multimedia" package which at a reduce price for a
packaged deal, which will bring OpenSolaris forward in regards to its
multi-media capabilities - DVD play back, WMA/WMV decode/encode
support through the gstreamer framework, and improved soundcard
support via the use of OpenSound.
Matt
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