Present Perfect

Been a while since I mentioned anything interesting about work, so here's a quick rundown.

codecs

[thomas@thomas gstreamer]$ ls
gst-fluendo-ac3dec     gst-fluendo-isofile     gst-fluendo-realdec  releases
gst-fluendo-alsaspdif  gst-fluendo-mp3         gst-fluendo-wmadec
gst-fluendo-asf        gst-fluendo-mpeg2video  gst-fluendo-wmaenc
gst-fluendo-asfmux     gst-fluendo-mpegdemux   gst-fluendo-wmvdec

It'll be nice to get some of these out to a wider audience. If you're interested in being on some form of a beta program for any of this in the near future, let Uraeus know.

JST

Wim has gone back to JST hacking this week. JST is pretty much an implementation of the 0.10 GStreamer design in Java. It's used for the new version of the Cortado applet. It takes a lot less code than the C version.

Interestingly, Wim found a race yesterday in GStreamer because he ran into the equivalent race in JST. The rac in GStreamer never got triggered in practice, but it does get hit in Java because it's a little slower there.

All of this is publically availabe in svn. I haven't tried building it recently, but will probably get back to it when I have some time so we can finally integrate it in Flumotion.

Looper

Edward, our Pitivi hacker, has put together a looper component for Flumotion. Basically, it's an audio/video producer that takes an ogg file and loops it forever. He added a simple UI for it - here's a peek. Looking through his code is a source of ideas for me to finish the flumotion-template and howto on writing components.

RTP

Mike started putting together a Flumotion component for RTP streaming this week based on the code I had written before. It took him less than three days to get the streamer done, with minimal changes to my modules, so that's good. It was exciting to see the stream produced by Edward's looper on the mobile phones. It looks much like in the screenshot above (which has the lowest possible bitrate set for video - hence the quality).

Synchronization

Andy finished his synchronization hacking this week. GStreamer clocks can now be exported over the network, allowing flumotion components to synchronize to one of the other components. Now, it seems, some more fixes are needed in GStreamer elements (for example, correct ALSA timestamping), but the basics are there now.

more to come

Jan is working on something cool as well that I can't say much about right now. But I'm sure some people will be happy with what he's doing. He's almost done and then we can throw something out.

All in all, an exciting week of finalizing bits and pieces at Fluendo HQ...

Been a while since I mentioned anything interesting about work, so here's a quick rundown. codecs [thomas@thomas gstreamer]$ ls gst-fluendo-ac3dec gst-fluendo-isofile gst-fluendo-realdec releases gst-fluendo-alsaspdif gst-fluendo-mp3 gst-fluendo-wmadec gst-fluendo-asf gst-fluendo-mpeg2video gst-fluendo-wmaenc gst-fluendo-asfmux...

There are days where my Spanish is quite acceptable. Last week we had Kevin and Christina over for dinner, and we spoke Spanish all the time. We also went to grab a bite after tango class with some of the other people in class, and we could join in the conversation just fine. Sure, I make a bunch of grammatical mistakes, and I should really spend some time on learning tenses, but overall it was ok.

And then there are days where it just doesn't work out. This week I went to buy batteries, and asked "Tienes baterias triple-A ?" The guy looked at me without flinching and asked "baterias o pilas" ?

At least he had the decency to correct me in this way instead of sending me home with triple-A drum sets.

There are days where my Spanish is quite acceptable. Last week we had Kevin and Christina over for dinner, and we spoke Spanish all the time. We also went to...

Lock your sons and daughters in this week. GStreamer 0.10.0 has just been released !

While working on the prerelease, I IM'd in a song request on WXYC, the radio that was first on the net (it seems that we in Europe were pretty soon after, not bad). Here's the snippet from that request. Notice him saying zero point one, not zero point ten. I guess when you think about it normal people would indeed say 0.1 and not 0.10
You can get requests on yourself, I just IM'd wxycrequests through gaim and the guy responded immediately and was very gracious.

Also, hearing the guy first leave his previous track play out completely, have a pause, have the intro of the next track on the first CD play, then interrupt it, then pause for a while, then do a completely dry presentation, then have some more radio silence, then play the second track, but fade it in way after the drums have started rolling, takes me back to those good old days way back when from 94 to 99. Getting 30 soon, anyone ?

We're having a cheese lunch on Wednesday in celebration, drop us a line if you're thinking of passing by to sample Edward's selection. Hints available in the release notes.

I'll be glad to turn down the heat a little on my GStreamer hacking and get back to Flumotion now. We've been under the radar for too long with the 0.9 conversion, and now it's time to turn ship again. Onwards !

Lock your sons and daughters in this week. GStreamer 0.10.0 has just been released ! While working on the prerelease, I IM'd in a song request on WXYC, the radio...

On our floor at work there are two toilet cubicles in the restroom. A few months ago some new light switches were installed with timers that were way too short, forcing you to press the damn button every minute when you're taking a dump while reading a copy of Hacker's Delight or the RTP book or whatever was lying around when I decided to take one. Of course the damn button is placed such that you really do have to lift your ass a little to be able to push it.

So taking a dump had gone from an enjoyable pastime and an opportunity for learning to a nerve-wrecking ass-lifting button-pushing hell.

Luckily I wasn't the only one who tried raising a tiny fist cursing "the system" by putting bits of paper and assorted desk items into the button mechanism to keep the button depressed. One day I even had the whole button pressed with a ball of paper and a few layers of gaffa tape - the really sticky kind used at concerts and festivals to keep cables in their place even though 60000 people walk over it all the time.

But I digress.

For the last few weeks, cubicle one has had its light switch continuously depressed through some way I have yet to figure out (but I applaud the mysterious Robin Hood who did this), while the other one had the regular button. So toilet A has the light burning all the time, while toilet B doesn't. Mysteriously, toilet A also always has the toilet seat *up*. toilet B has the seat *down*.

What is *up* with that ? If you were to use a toilet only for stand-up peeing, would it matter much if the light stayed on for less than a minute ? Yet the one that is comfortably set up for a long session of dump-n-read has the seat *up*.

By the way, I should mention that there are two normal standing toilets (for peeing) right next to the two cubicles. So there's no reason someone should go into the cubicle with light, put the seat up, and pee, and leave the seat up.

Can somebody with a passing knowledge of antropology, sociology, psychology or urology please explain this to me ? Thank you.

An entry on my actual anal fixations will follow later.

A tip for budding Belgian bands

On our floor at work there are two toilet cubicles in the restroom. A few months ago some new light switches were installed with timers that were way too short,...

GStreamer 0.9.6 is out. For those not in the know, a new stable release is less than two weeks away ! This release incorporates all the API changes we had queued up over the last month. It was a bit of a commit- and bug-closing frenzy, so it was two days late, but it's out now.

If you've written an application using GStreamer, better late than never to try and port your application and point out any possible problems we might have forgotten about...

I'm looking forward (though with a little anxiety) to the stable release - I'm very happy with all the love the core has gotten, and we've been able to layer lots of quality all over - automatic build testing, unit tests, automatic valgrinding, ... Edward is working on a media test suite which will be out soon as well. Seems #gstreamer has really caught on to what it takes to produce and improve quality, which makes me happy.

I remember a few weeks ago when someone proposed a port of the matroska muxer to 0.9 and I said "well, your patch is missing a unit test". I was expecting him to tell me to take a hike. But no - he wrote a unit test, submitted it, and added "writing this unit test I found a few bugs in my muxer." G-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-eat !

Anyway, I'm sure all other libs out there were already doing this, and this is nothing new - but it makes me happy we've come this far.

Now, on to cleaning up more of our tree and moving some stuff around...

GStreamer 0.9.6 is out. For those not in the know, a new stable release is less than two weeks away ! This release incorporates all the API changes we had...