Phonon Now Supports Qt5, Likes VLC Over GStreamer

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Phonon Now Supports Qt5, Likes VLC Over GStreamer

The Phonon Qt Multimedia Solution developed within the KDE camp for a multi-platform multimedia sound framework now prefers VLC on the back-end over using GStreamer...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTUwNDM

[schmidtbag]

I've always used the VLC backend anyway. The others are too limiting (they're fine for laptops though).

I hope the new phonon is better. Phonon has always been the worst part of my KDE experience. It's potentially powerful, but not executed well.

[zanny]

What a complete failure. KDE gained some sanity by accepting the single stack approach with systemd and wayland. Now they decided to do the worst thing ever; Abstaction layers and multiple backends for media. This is destined to be a bug hell and a usability hell.

Do one stack and do it good.

Especially since qt5 introduces qtmultimedia in the first place, where that has gstreamer as its preferred backend. It means KDE and qt are in direct conflict over what media framework to use.

Yes, Phonon has much more to it than a media file and audio playback engine like the qtmultimedia module, but I was personally hoping the KDE camp could adopt an internal qtmultimedia based audio / acceleration control solution.

[Ericg]

Especially since qt5 introduces qtmultimedia in the first place, where that has gstreamer as its preferred backend. It means KDE and qt are in direct conflict over what media framework to use.

Yes, Phonon has much more to it than a media file and audio playback engine like the qtmultimedia module, but I was personally hoping the KDE camp could adopt an internal qtmultimedia based audio / acceleration control solution.

Remember that for KF 5 KDElibs are just a bunch of extra Qt libs. You'd have to check git master to see if they are still using Phonon or QtMultimedia for audio processing. So this may just be a stop-gap solution until Plasm Workspacez 2 launches and everything's been rewritten anyway.

Also, thank you Michael for covering this I'll be sure to keep dropping news links in case there's anything you like enough to write about.

[Awesomeness]

Phoronix: Phonon Now Supports Qt5, Likes VLC Over GStreamer

The Phonon Qt Multimedia Solution developed within the KDE camp for a multi-platform multimedia sound framework now prefers VLC on the back-end over using GStreamer...

No, no, no, this cannot be correct. Gnome fanboys keep repeating that GStreamer is the best thing since sliced bread and dynamically changing back-ends is stupid and yaddayaddayadda.

Nah, just kidding. VLC is awesome. It's my preferred Phonon back-end since it exists. GStreamer has problems after problems. First it segfaulted for me, later it randomly stopped playback. VLC rocks.

[smitty3268]

What a shocking suprise

What a complete failure. KDE gained some sanity by accepting the single stack approach with systemd and wayland. Now they decided to do the worst thing ever; Abstaction layers and multiple backends for media. This is destined to be a bug hell and a usability hell.

Do one stack and do it good.

Honton shows up and criticizes something KDE has done? No way! /sarcasm

[TheBlackCat]

You'd have to check git master to see if they are still using Phonon or QtMultimedia for audio processing.

Phonon and QtMultimedia cover different use-cases.

[KellyClowers]

Terrible. Gstreamer is the only way to go. I just wish there was a gst based player with mplayer's interface.

[Delgarde]

Honton shows up and criticizes something KDE has done? No way! /sarcasm

Stranger still, he's right. KDE *does* have an excessively complicated media stack, due to the number of layers used to achieve platform independence.

It's never been particularly clear to me what benefit they get from Phonon. In theory, it's there for portability - one API that works on all platforms, using native media frameworks where appropriate. But their most commonly used backend is Gstreamer - which effectively provides the same functionality as Phonon, already runs on every platform that Phonon does, and likewise, uses native media frameworks, etc. So it's hard to see what value is added from having an extra layer of abstraction...

[pingufunkybeat]

Stranger still, he's right. KDE *does* have an excessively complicated media stack, due to the number of layers used to achieve platform independence.

It's never been particularly clear to me what benefit they get from Phonon. In theory, it's there for portability - one API that works on all platforms, using native media frameworks where appropriate. But their most commonly used backend is Gstreamer - which effectively provides the same functionality as Phonon, already runs on every platform that Phonon does, and likewise, uses native media frameworks, etc. So it's hard to see what value is added from having an extra layer of abstraction...

The idea is that Phonon is (supposed to be) considerably simpler to program for than GStreamer. It's trivial for any KDE-based app to add basic multimedia content using Phonon without worrying about details. The idea is also that Phonon is a part of the KDE4 API and software depends on it. when Phonon was conceived, all GStreamer could do was crash repeatedly.

It was not meant as a replacement for GStreamer, and people building state-of-the-art media players should use GStreamer or FFMpeg or xinelib or vlc or something else directly.

Remember, the main idea behind KDE is to give you a powerful set of libraries making it easy to write powerful applications. Multimedia is simply a part of that. You can use GStreamer directly. You can also draw your widgets using Xlib, or link to an external HTML renderer, but the point is that you don't have to.