[gentoo-desktop] phonon

[gentoo-desktop] phonon

[Dominique Michel]

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. 

On one hand, the new kaffeine use the outdated and non maintained xine
backend for phonon.
On the other hand, I can launch kde, setup phonon to use jack, and
kaffeine work fine with it. But back into fvwm, I still get no sound
with kaffeine as kde is not running anymore.

I try to remove phonon-kde and install qt-phonon. The removing of
phonon-kde was fine and kdebase-meta was removed at the same time. But I
am still not able to install qt-phonon as it is a blocking:
kaffeine need kde-libs, which block qt-phonon.

In conclusion, phonon is worst for me than arts was. What a mess!?! ...
I don't want to flame, this is just my POV.

Do you know if the kde guys (the upstream for phonon for what I know) do
have any plan to solve this mess?

Do you know any solution that will let me to have sound from kaffeine
into jack when not running kde?

Dominique

-- 
"We have the heroes we deserve."

[gentoo-desktop] Re: phonon

[Duncan]

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.

Meanwhile, while kde-5 is already under development, they're making this 
one a MUCH more incremental upgrade and AFAIK will keep kde-phonon.  Time 
will tell whether they learned the lessons of the kde3 -> kde4 upgrade or 
whether they're simply making a bunch more empty promises that will be 
out like yesterday's bathwater.  One thing I know for sure is that they 
have about zero credibility left to lose at this point, so one way or 
another, it'll get better: they either pay attention to their users or 
they'll end up much like xfree86 did when xorg took off.

But... phonon /should/ be able to be run independently of kde, since that 
was the idea from the start, both for kde-phonon, and with qt-phonon.  
For me, however, kde4, now USE=-semantic-desktop and without akonadi, 
nepomuk, etc (I migrated to claws-mail for mail and run a separate 
instance of it for my feed-reader so no kdepim to pull in akonadi at all, 
and I was thus able to kill semantic-desktop entirely), is still my 
desktop of choice, so I'm running phonon with it and thus will be about 
zero help in trying to run it independently.  But I believe I can still 
be of help, see below. =:^)

> 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. =:^)


Meanwhile, back to phonon, if it's still needed after you try smplayer... 
I had some problems with phonon-xine too.  As you mention, it's 
deprecated and doesn't get a lot of love, these days.  There's other 
backends, however.

phonon-vlc is the one I use.  Of course, that means installing yet 
another media player, but phonon-vlc works well, here.  (At least on my 
main machine, however, smplayer still works better than vlc, tho.  But on 
my netbook with its much lower resolution and Intel based graphics, I had 
some problems with the various smplayer video backends, and vlc seems to 
bypass them so works better, there.)

The upstream default phonon-backend is phonon-gstreamer, probably because 
so many distributions ship gnome by default, thus making gstreamer the 
best integrated phonon-backend for them.  But as with mplayer, I had 
problems with gstreamer back in the day, and haven't had it on my system 
since.  Very likely, again just like mplayer, the problems are long 
worked out and gstreamer would be fine, but as I'm sure you know, gentoo's 
build-from-sources approach tends to encourage the good security practice 
of only installing what you actually use, and I've simply never needed to 
try gstreamer since I had those problems, as there have always been other 
working alternatives.

So if you need to keep phonon, do try one of the other backends, either 
phonon-gstreamer or phonon-vlc, depending on what fits in best on your 
system.  Either one is likely to work better than the deprecated phonon-
xine.  I know phonon-vlc has solved my problems here, and when others 
have reported problems with their backend (mostly on the kde lists, a 
couple of which I'm a regular on) and I suggested switching, some of them 
chose phonon-gstreamer and reported back that it solved their problems.  
But OTOH, I've had a couple people who were on the gstreamer backend 
report problems, that went away when they switched to a different one.  
But there's at least the three to choose from, so if one has problems, do 
try another.  I've never had anyone that reported failure with all three 
backends, tho that was in the kde context, and your problem may not be 
the backend, but phonon/kde4 itself.  Still, it's worth giving the 
different backends a try, if you still need phonon after giving smplayer 
a try, anyway.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Re: phonon

[Dominique Michel]

Le Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:34:19 +0000 (UTC),
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.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."

[gentoo-desktop] Re: phonon

[Duncan]

Dominique Michel posted on Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:56:21 +0100 as excerpted:

> 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.

You're way beyond my level there.  Hopefully smplayer does work for you 
after workarounds, etc, but I'm afraid I won't be of much more help, 
there.

Did you have time to try the other phonon backends, phonon-vlc or phonon-
gstreamer, and that didn't work, or are you trying smplayer first and 
will only fall back to kaffeine and the phonon thing if that can't be 
made to work?

Also, it's not of much help now, but given how advanced smplayer already 
is, the author is obviously targeting the user wanting more than just the 
typical media control buttons.  As such, I'd /guess/ he'd be quite 
willing to work to integrate additional functionality you may need, if 
you simply ask, and especially if you can well explain it for 
implementation and are willing to bug-squash with the first 
implementations.  It may well be that smplayer could have all the 
functionality you need integrated, in a couple versions, if you just ask 
and are willing to test for him. =:^)

But I'm just guessing.  I've not contacted him myself and couldn't 
presume to speak for him or obligate him.  Still, the chances are far 
higher there, than they would be with, say, dragonplayer, kde's default-
as-shipped media-player-for-dummies.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Re: phonon

[Dominique Michel]

Le Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:32:08 +0000 (UTC),
Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net> a écrit :

> Dominique Michel posted on Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:56:21 +0100 as
> excerpted:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> You're way beyond my level there.  Hopefully smplayer does work for
> you after workarounds, etc, but I'm afraid I won't be of much more
> help, there.

I get it to work with a few custom udev rules. The trick is to create
a fake dvb card with symlinks in /dev/dvb. The device must be shifted
for that card (adapter1/demux0 must link to adapter0/demux1 and so on).
That way, I can run "mplayer dvb://1@" for the dvb-s and "mplayer
dvb://2@" for the dvb-t.

It work fine with mplayer and both dvb-s and dvb-t now, but with
smplayer only the dvb-s is working.

> 
> Did you have time to try the other phonon backends, phonon-vlc or
> phonon- gstreamer, and that didn't work, or are you trying smplayer
> first and will only fall back to kaffeine and the phonon thing if
> that can't be made to work?

No. kaffeine for kde3 work fine here with my setup. What I want is to
find another good solution for watching and recording TV for the time
when this version of kaffeine will not work any more.

I already done a xdialog script for the radio because mplayer was the
only one player that was able to run the radio, that without the need of
an internal audio cable between the radio card and the sound card. I
extended it in order to be able to record from the video input of my TV
card with mencoder. And maybe than I will extend it further for TV
watching and recording.


> 
> Also, it's not of much help now, but given how advanced smplayer
> already is, the author is obviously targeting the user wanting more
> than just the typical media control buttons.  As such, I'd /guess/
> he'd be quite willing to work to integrate additional functionality
> you may need, if you simply ask, and especially if you can well
> explain it for implementation and are willing to bug-squash with the
> first implementations.  It may well be that smplayer could have all
> the functionality you need integrated, in a couple versions, if you
> just ask and are willing to test for him. =:^)

The above issue is a problem with mplayer. Another problem is than the
developer of smplayer seam to lack a DVB card.

> 
> But I'm just guessing.  I've not contacted him myself and couldn't 
> presume to speak for him or obligate him.  Still, the chances are far 
> higher there, than they would be with, say, dragonplayer, kde's
> default- as-shipped media-player-for-dummies.
> 

I will contact him, and also the mplayer team.


-- 
"We have the heroes we deserve."

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Re: phonon

[E. Liddell]

On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:39:00 +0100
Dominique Michel <dominique.michel@vtxnet.ch> wrote:

> No. kaffeine for kde3 work fine here with my setup. What I want is to
> find another good solution for watching and recording TV for the time
> when this version of kaffeine will not work any more.

The KDE 3.5 version of Kaffeine is one of the assorted auxiliary programs
adopted by the Trinity Project, so there's still an upstream trying to maintain
it and it will hopefully remain workable for some time to come.

[gentoo-desktop] Trinity (Was: phonon)

[Duncan]

E. Liddell posted on Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:46:18 -0500 as excerpted:

> On Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:39:00 +0100 Dominique Michel
> <dominique.michel@vtxnet.ch> wrote:
> 
>> No. kaffeine for kde3 work fine here with my setup. What I want is to
>> find another good solution for watching and recording TV for the time
>> when this version of kaffeine will not work any more.
> 
> The KDE 3.5 version of Kaffeine is one of the assorted auxiliary
> programs adopted by the Trinity Project, so there's still an upstream
> trying to maintain it and it will hopefully remain workable for some
> time to come.

Regarding trinity, what are the chances of having it appear in distros, 
etc, at least after they finish porting to qt4 (or by then, possibly 
qt5)?  I don't expect it to ever make the big-2 into the big-3, really, 
but having it appear in the second tier along side xfce and lxde, and 
whatever they're calling the parallel effort to continue gnome2, could be 
quite useful.

Except that I suppose kde3/trinity is still far bigger in terms of number 
of apps/packages/size than most of the second tier.  But has anyone 
actually looked to see by how much?  Are we talking 10X, 3X. 1.5X, or 
1.1X?  If it's 1.1X than I shouldn't think it'd be a huge problem.  1.5X 
probably not either.  3X might be, but a stripped down (to say 1.5X) 
version might ship, with perhaps an alternate, possibly community 
maintained, repo/overlay/ppa/whatever for those who want the full deal. 
10X... that's not realistic as a second tier.  It'd have to be dedicated 
distro, and perhaps get popular enough there to go first tier.  But I 
really have no idea.  Does anyone?

Obviously in current context, "distros" refers to one particular distro, 
gentoo, but I don't expect it to try it by itself.

What do the trinity folks base their own work on, distro-wise?

Are there any dedicated trinity distros in the wings?

Because, I really can't see trinity continuing "forever", unless it gets 
some community support and eventually some new community blood.  And 
that's not going to happen, unless it's out there on the distros for 
people to be exposed to.

I have a bit of a personal interest, even tho I'm on kde4 for both my 
main machine and netbook atm, not only out of nostalgia as a former kde3 
user, but because eventually, I can see myself deciding that my netbook 
really doesn't run kde5 or whatever well enough to be worth the hassle, 
and kde3 could very well be quite a reasonable fit, at that point.  Plus, 
I could lifestyle change at some point, and given that I've been with kde 
since the kde2 era, if I downscale from whatever the current kde desktop 
is at the time, I expect I'd be rather more comfortable with something 
approaching a modern kde3, than with any of the other second-tier 
desktops.

Mainly, I just like to keep my options open, and assuming trinity does 
get the qt4/qt5/whatever port done at some point, that really does seem 
to me to be potentially the most viable "intermediate weight" option I'll 
have, given my own history and preferences.  So naturally, I want to see 
it continue and mature as a viable option, and the only way I really see 
that happening, is if it ultimately finishes the qt4/qt5/whatever port 
and gets reintroduced on the major distros as a second tier option, so I 
really want /that/ to happen, and the above questions are because I'm 
wondering just how close to reality that vision is.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Trinity (Was: phonon)

[Serghei Amelian]

On Monday 21 November 2011 16:05:11 E. Liddell wrote:
[...]

> The project started with a source tree from Ubuntu, but it's now been
> stripped of distro-peculiar material.  (Well, mostly.  Missed bits are
> cleaned up when they're found.) The core developers seem to be mostly
> Ubuntu and Debian people, with a couple from Gentoo working on the
> build-system port.

Actually I'm Gentoo fanboy, for this reason cmake port was done with Gentoo in 
mind :) (I'm the cmake developer/maintainer for Trinity project).

[...]

-- 
Serghei