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VLC With Phonon Back-End Is Now Ready For Use

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  • #1

    VLC With Phonon Back-End Is Now Ready For Use

    Phoronix: VLC With Phonon Back-End Is Now Ready For Use

    There's long been a desire by KDE users to have a Phonon back-end for the VLC media player (there's 4 year old bug reports on the matter) and just now there is finally a Phonon-VLC release that is considered "stable enough for day to day use." Phonon-VLC is a version of VLC that uses the Phonon back-end from KDE4 as it's back-end. This multimedia API was originally provided by KDE libraries and then integrated into Qt is abstracted and can then target a particular multimedia back-end like GStreamer or Xine...

    VLC With Phonon Back-End Is Now Ready For Use - Phoronix
    http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODg1NA
    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite
    Tags: kde, phonon, vlc
  • #2
    If i'm not mistaken this is a backend for phonon that uses vlc backend instead of xine or gstreamer. I'd look into it so as to not confuse anyone.

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    • #3
      Yes, that's what I understood. It's a replacement for phonon-xine, which is the default backend right now, and phonon-gstreamer, which never really took off.

      This means that all KDE apps built on Phonon (like amarok and kaffeine) get all of VLC's codecs for free.

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      • #4
        Yeah I guess Michael got a bit confused

        Title should have read "Phonon With VLC Back-End Is Now Ready For Use"

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        • #5
          Ya the title is backwards.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by quintesse View Post
            Yeah I guess Michael got a bit confused

            Title should have read "Phonon With VLC Back-End Is Now Ready For Use"
            No. Read the bug report. I think this is a bit of pointed humor about the number of abstraction layers KDE/phonon uses.

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            • #7
              Originally posted by DanL View Post
              No. Read the bug report. I think this is a bit of pointed humor about the number of abstraction layers KDE/phonon uses.
              NVM. I'm too drunk x)

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              • #8
                The VLC backend has still many problems (because of VLC and phonon).

                As seen here, VLC has a bug in the Ogg demuxer is still incomplete, with bugs. The ogg file length is not determined correctly, sometimes it doesn't finish a track, and you can not use the progress slider to jump to a certain time in the track.
                http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/1098 and http://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/1859

                The Clementine devs (the Amarok 1.4 port to Qt 4, and no KDE dependencies) say that "VLC has buffer under-run problems" and "Phonon does not support getting raw audio stream for use in analyses and visualizations".

                All this Phonon story is a big problem. I don't know why the devs don't realize it was a bad idea, almost 4 years ago. It is not possible to use subtitles with Phonon! Every decent player has support for this. So you can only see a movie with audio that you understand...

                The VLC backend has problems with PulseAudio, the phonon app will crash on exit if you are lucky.

                Compare a media player, for example SMPlayer, or VLC it self, to Dragon Player (which uses Phonon). Phonon based apps are so limited.

                In GNOME, almost all apps use GStreamer, which works! It has support from many companies, is crossplatform.
                The KDE devs said at the beginning of KDE 4 (2006), that GStreamer was not a good choose for them, because it didn't guarantee a stable API for the KDE 4 lifespan. But now we can see the API is stable since 2005.
                Many apps outside GNOME use GStreamer, like Opera, Songbird, Internet Tablets...

                Originally posted by Phoronix
                Phonon-VLC is also the first Phonon back-end to integrate audio and video capture support for Phonon that was developed as a Google Summer of Code project.
                It is not stable, it is still experimental.
                Any way, after so many years planing about Phonon, 3 years of stable KDE 4, Phonon has not *stable* support for audio and video capture.

                Qt doesn't develop Phonon anymore, now the develop QtMultimedia and QtMobility.

                I think if they (KDE) focus in QtGStreamer, we all will get a much better life.

                Also, Kubuntu is planing to switch to the GStreamer backend. It is maintained and has new features in the new release of Phonon.
                Until Phonon is replaced with something better, like GStreamer, I will use the gstremaer backend for Phonon, it works for me better than the xine of VLC backend.

                Originally posted by pingufunkybeat View Post
                This means that all KDE apps built on Phonon (like amarok and kaffeine) get all of VLC's codecs for free.
                kaffeine reverted back to xine. http://kaffeine.kde.org/?q=node/26


                Who uses Phonon?
                I think: KDE for small things, Amarok, Dragon Player, and some small nice apps in KDE-apps.org Who else?

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by KDesk View Post
                  I think if they (KDE) focus in QtGStreamer, we all will get a much better life.
                  This idea makes me shudder. I've had nothing but constant issues with Gstreamer in the past most noticably really crappy audio sync which isn't a problem with any other backend.

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                  • #10
                    Gstreamer is incredibly crappy, at least on my setup. I know a 800MHz Sempron is no speed demon, but Xine plays videos and music incredibly well whereas with Gstreamer my whole sound system dies when I attempt to play something, not to mention the hideous lag during video playback.
                    I can go with either and would care less about a xine vs. gstreamer battle, but right now xine works best for me.

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