Re: [Ring] ffmpeg and gstreamer (was: Ring packages for Fedora)

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hello Anna,

Apologies for the delayed reply.

----- Original Message -----
> From: address@hidden
> To: "Maxim Cournoyer" <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> Sent: Saturday, February 3, 2018 1:03:46 AM
> Subject: Re: Ring packages for Fedora (was: [Ring] Are the Arch linux 
> packages gone?)

> Hello Maxim! Thanks for taking time!
> 
>> Maxim Cournoyer <address@hidden> hat am 2. Februar 2018 um
>> 19:04 geschrieben:
>> 
>> 
>> Hello!
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> > From: address@hidden
>> > To: "Maxim Cournoyer" <address@hidden>
>> > Cc: address@hidden
>> > Sent: Friday, February 2, 2018 5:19:41 AM
>> > Subject: Re: Ring packages for Fedora (was: [Ring] Are the Arch linux 
>> > packages
>> > gone?)
>> 
>> > He Maxim,
>> > 
>> > thanks for your reply and taking time!
>> > 
>> > Related to RPM fusion:
>> > For me there seems to be the problem, that people already have to know 
>> > about
>> > Ring.
>> > There is no chance to stumble and discover it through the categories of the
>> > AppCenter while searching for Apps they really need.
>> 
>> Yes, we also would prefer to be available 'out of the box' on Fedora, so we 
>> are
>> interested in evaluating all options.
> 
> That's pretty cool!
> 
>> 
>> > Related to the patents:
>> > 1. Why does Ring have to use FFMPEG at all?
>> 
>> It's currently used for processing (decoding/encoding) video and audio 
>> streams.
>> It's a required dependency of Ring.
>> 
>> > 2. Could https://pipewire.org/#about be an alternative?
>> 
>> From a quick glance at the project, it seems PipeWire is about providing a
>> similar set of features as PulseAudio but for videos. It is not dealing with
>> the encoding/decoding of the streams directly itself but can be used with
>> GStreamer, which can do that with its various plugins.
> 
> Hmm on their website they tell:
> " Features include:
> - Capture and playback of audio and video with minimal latency.
> - Real-time Multimedia processing on audio and video." -> Doesn't this include
> streaming?
> --> So probably it's about video and audio too!
> 
>> 
>> It might be possible to use GStreamer and a select choices of free and patent
>> unencumbered codecs, but I'd expect this to be a big effort (to adapt Ring 
>> for
>> it).
> 
> -> What makes this a big effort? I am not into that technical things, so i 
> just
> ask you directly ...

The APIs being very different would suggest lots of refactoring.

Efforts are being made to keep the video/audio portion of the code base clean 
and more modular, so in the future maybe it wouldn't entail as much an effort.

>> 
>> It'd be useful to make a detailed analysis of GStreamer to see how it fares
>> against FFmpeg.
> 
> This would be cool! When will you guys do this? Btw. thanks for working on 
> Ring!

It's not high on our priority list at the moment; maybe you could lend a hand 
if it is a topic of interest to you? :)

Thank you,

Maxim