Re: [gentoo-desktop] Re: phonon

[Dominique Michel]

Le Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:34:19 +0000 (UTC),
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net> a écrit :

> Dominique Michel posted on Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:35:18 +0100 as
> excerpted:
>
> > I am using fvwm with fvwm-crystal. I use a few kde apps like kate or
> > kaffeine. I am also running jack all the time as sound server.
> >
> > The only one program I get trouble with this setup is kaffeine.
> > When the sound is working fine with the old kaffeine version for
> > kde3, it doesn't work at all with kaffeine for kde4. The problem
> > seam to come from kaffeine and phonon.
>
> > Do you know if the kde guys (the upstream for phonon for what I
> > know) do have any plan to solve this mess?
>
> The problem with qt-phonon was that the qt guys decided to use it for
> multimedia, then just as quickly (but after making it a part of qt4)
> decided it wasn't really what they needed for the mobile side and
> went with qt-multimedia instead.  So it kind of got dropped as far as
> continued improvements go, but they had to continue shipping it since
> it was now part of the qt4 api.
>
> Of course, then nokia dropped much of their previous Linux/Qt-based-
> mobile emphasis and went with MS... kind of leaving the
> mobile-targeted qt-multimedia up in the air. <shrug>
>
> Qt5 is under development, but I honestly haven't the foggiest what
> they're doing with multimedia there.  Perhaps they'll fully drop
> phonon. OTOH, perhaps now that the money angle isn't driving it to
> the same extent and any further platform ports will be purely
> community driven, perhaps they'll drop qt-multimedia (or keep the
> name but integrate phonon) and refocus on the desktop.
>
> Perhaps the best that has come out of the whole mess, is that qt
> itself is now fully free, sponsored by the qt-foundation, which was
> in turn setup by nokia, but is fully community governed and steered,
> now, with the nokia sponsored devs and other community devs now on
> the same footing -- it's a purely contributions based meritocracy now.

Nice move.

>
> > Do you know any solution that will let me to have sound from
> > kaffeine into jack when not running kde?
>
> I *STRONGLY* recommend that you try smplayer, instead.  Back in the
> kde3 era I swore by kaffeine myself, but back when I last tried the
> kde4 kaffeine alpha, back in the kde 4.2/4.3 era when kde and gentoo
> were dropping kde3 support (with qt3 support already long gone
> upstream), it was a castrated wimp of its former self, with barely
> the basics working, non of its former power.  Maybe it has improved
> since then, but I found something even better, for me at least, and
> haven't looked back.
>
> I went looking for something else, and stumbled upon the qt-4 based
> smplayer.  For me, smplayer had all the configurability and power of
> kaffeine for kde3, if not more, and I've been using it ever since.
> =:^) As mentioned it's qt4 based, and can skin to look like a kde app
> if desired.  However, because it's only qt4, not kde4, it doesn't
> require any of the kde4 infrastructure, including the phonon that's
> giving you so much problems.
>
> But still a couple of caveats, that might or might not affect your
> usage.  First, smplayer is (as the name implies) mplayer based, not
> xine- based as is kaffeine.  I was originally a bit leery of that as
> I'd had problems with mplayer back in the day, but the problems seem
> to have been worked out and at least via smplayer, mplayer seems to
> be fine, now. =:^)  Second, while smplayer appears to have
> tv-tuner-card functionality similar to that of kaffeine, I don't have
> such a device, so have no idea how it compares in that regard.  All I
> know is that it /more/ than exceeded my expectations in regard to
> playing computer and dvd media, and is if anything, even more
> configurable, hotkeys, etc, than kaffeine was.
>
> So... I HIGHLY recommend that you try smplayer.  I certainly haven't
> looked back at kaffeine since I did.  Hopefully you'll be as happy
> with it as I've been. =:^)
>

I like mplayer, it is the best player around with alsaplayer. They
are simple, but get the job done. I try smplayer. It lack several
functions of kaffeine like the channel search and the EPG. I used
dvbscan from linuxtv-dvb-apps for searching the channels, and now the
dvb-s part of my card work with smplayer.

I still miss the recording facility of kaffeine. It is possible to add
a dumpstream in the options, but it would be better to use mencoder for
that. With mencoder, we would have the capability to transcode the
recording to another format. 

I also have problem with the dvb-t part of the card. I finally get a
working channel list for the dvb-t. But I cannot get it to work with
mplayer. I get a workaround here :
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=913466
but when I apply it, this is the dvb-s part of the card that is not
working any more. So I have to look if I can solve it with some custom
udev rules.

Cheers,
Dominique


-- 
"We have the heroes we deserve."