Why Totem?

[zugunder]

Hi,

I am using Mageia 3 with KDE and I realized that Totem is installed by default as a video player (apart from Dragon Player).
I am curious why. It is of course a Gnome application (not Qt). What is the reason behind it is being included into KDE desktop? Maybe its Firefox plugins? Or because it utilizes gstreamer1.0 (though the system phonon backend runs on gstreamer0.1)?

Thank you.

[doktor5000]

Well, probably both. Also, it's the default media player by GNOME, but with gstreamer and the default phonon backend also being gstreamer, it fits with KDE (well, to the degree that it doesn't add a huge bunch of libraries or such). Anyways, i think that's not a good choice. The packagekit integration never worked, so totem can't add additional codecs and people complain that they're missing codecs. And it relies on external codecs.

IMHO VLC would be a better choice for both, as it's leaner, offers QT interface but also fits with GTK, and brings all codecs. Plus if you enable tainted, you get the tainted version automatically.

There was also a discussion about this some time ago: http://www.mail-archive.com/mageia-dev@ ... 02984.html

[zugunder]

Thank you, Doctor,
But even the advantages you mentioned are not valid, well, not completely I'd say. Though Totem and Phonon backend rely on Gstreamer, they depend on different versions - if I not mistaken, Totem requires gstreamer1.0 and Phonon runs gstreamer0.1. So there are effectively 2 sets of (very similar) codecs installed in parallel. Maybe gstreamer1.0 is somewhat better than gstreamer0.1, but it seems to me that Totem is the only application in the whole distribution running gstreamer1.0. Moreover, all the Totem plugins for Firefox do not replace Flash, which is still the most demanded video plugin...
BTW, is xine development officially dropped? I am not sure, but I think I have bumped recently in some fresh news of xine, but I can't remember where...

[doktor5000]

Well, i've only tried to reproduce what others used as arguments pro-Totem.

I'm totally against it, also against all this gstreamer stuff. As i've mentioned, we should use VLC by default,
that way we would also have a very good audio/video converter by default. Plus when enabling Tainted repos
you get the "full" version of it, and no additional codecs needed.

[zugunder]

I understand, but even though it seems to be a very tough choice, as though VLC offers the Phonon backend which may be used instead of Gstreamer, the player itself is primarily video-oriented. As far as I can see, it does not have an equalizer, which is a very important feature for any music player. In the same time, most of the pure music players (like Clementine, Amarok) require Gstreamer (or xine).
I read the discussion on selection of the video player and realized that there is probably no clearly winning option. However, I think I could suggest a kind of workaround for that (if it could be called like this).
What if, for example, the basic KDE installation includes a really minimal set of multimedia players - like Amarok + Dragon (so they would play most of the typical formats out of the box), but in the same time, the distribution provides an informational application which lists several main alternatives for them with brief description of their advantages/differences? Then the user would know about possibl options (and what to look for in the repos), so he could decide himself what to use and what fits his requirements the best. This may apply also to other programs, like office and graphic tools, etc.

[doktor5000]

Well, it's all open source, so everything is possible.
Which brings the question on the table - who will implemented that program?

FWIW, vlc has an equalizer, and also advanced settings menus for video effects,
synchronisation controls and stuff like that. http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation: ... io_Filters

[zugunder]

Which brings the question on the table - who will implemented that program?

Well, in the simplest (not to say primitive) form of a table, if it does not require any coding - even I could do that. The question is if it is really interesting or is it junk.

FWIW, vlc has an equalizer, and also advanced settings menus for video effects, synchronisation controls and stuff like that. http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation: ... io_Filters

Thanks, I was looking for it under different menu. And it really makes VLC an almost universal thing, so only tastes and owner's preferences matter .

[doktor5000]

Which brings the question on the table - who will implemented that program?

Well, in the simplest (not to say primitive) form of a table, if it does not require any coding - even I could do that. The question is if it is really interesting or is it junk.

Okay, so prepare a mockup / working prototype, get it listed at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Category:Pro ... ureMageia4
discuss it on the mailinglists, find ressources/maintainers to implement it and maybe you'll see it included in Mageia 4.