I've noticed poor performance (and erratic, incomplete file compatibility) with Gstreamer. For example, SMplayer can handle 720p videos, while Dragon Player (using the Gstreamer Phonon back-end) struggles with 480p. SMplayer has no issues with Matroska containers (.mkv files), while Dragon Player wants nothing to do with them - it seems like it want to open them, but nothing comes up. The thing that really confounds me is that SMplayer will play commercial DVD's all day long with no issues whatsoever. Dragon Player will do them, but with lots of corruption and artifacting.

I know, an obvious solution is "use the Xine back-end for Phonon." Which I do, for the most part. However, I can across the Elisa media center software. Seems pretty slick, but it ties to Gstreamer for its media engine, and suffers the same performance problems as Phonon applications do.

What confuses me is that, if I'm not mistaken, Gstreamer can latch on to ffmpeg to do the heavy lifting with decoding and the like - just like Mplayer does. So, if it's using the same libraries, shouldn't the playback performance be comparable, if not identical?

I'm thinking that I'm doing something wrong. I'm using openSUSE 11.1 x86 with the Factory Desktop repositories (KDE 4.2 snapshots). All my codecs, libraries, decoders, and the like are from the Packman repository (those packages are, uh, "not concerned" with any potential legal ramifications). I'd be more than happy to post specific versions of the libraries/codecs/applications I'm using if necessary (though the KDE4 stuff is constantly changing). I can also post console output for programs if requested. I'm thinking that it's got to be something trivial like a configuration issue. I just don't know where/how to fix that.

This seems like a general GStreamer problem on your system. The GStreamer FFMpeg plugin does exist, but I do not know if anyone has packaged it for openSUSE. I only use Xine.

Try removing the directory ~/.gstreamer-0.10/ without any GStreamer apps running.

bcooksley wrote:This seems like a general GStreamer problem on your system. The GStreamer FFMpeg plugin does exist, but I do not know if anyone has packaged it for openSUSE. I only use Xine.

Try removing the directory ~/.gstreamer-0.10/ without any GStreamer apps running.

Yeah, it exists. Packman packages it. For the sake of completeness:

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jeffro@tandy400:~> rpm -qa | grep gst
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ugly-0.10.10-42.pm.2
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-0.10.22-42.pm.2
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad-0.10.10-42.pm.1
kaffeine-gstreamer-0.8.7-2.pm.2
gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mpegmux-0.10.4-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-java-1.0-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mp3-0.10.10-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-bad-lang-0.10.10-42.pm.1
phonon-backend-gstreamer-0_10-4.3.0-26.17
gstreamer-0_10-ffmpeg-0.10.6-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base-lang-0.10.22-42.pm.2
libgstreamer-0_10-0-0.10.22-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-0.10.22-42.pm.1
libgstinterfaces-0_10-0-0.10.22-42.pm.2
gstreamer-0_10-utils-0.10.22-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-ugly-lang-0.10.10-42.pm.2
gstreamer-0_10-lang-0.10.22-42.pm.1
python-gstreamer-0_10-0.10.14-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-fluendo-mpegdemux-0.10.23-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-schroedinger-1.0.5-42.pm.4
gstreamer-utils-0.10.22-42.pm.1
gstreamer-0_10-plugins-good-0.10.13-42.pm.1

As for ~/.gstreamer,

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jeffro@tandy400:~> ls ~/.gstreamer-0.10/
registry.i686.bin

Should there be something else in there? Like *.conf?

Well, anyway, ditched that directory then tried Elisa again. Still doesn't acknowledge .mkv's, and still struggles with 480p content.

As far as I am aware GStreamer does not have any other configuration directories. The only others I could find were in /etc:

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./gconf/schemas/gstreamer-0.10.schemas
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/schemas/system/gstreamer
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10/%gconf.xml
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10/default
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10/default/%gconf.xml
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/schemas/system/gstreamer/%gconf.xml
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/system/gstreamer
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10/%gconf.xml
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10/default
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/system/gstreamer/0.10/default/%gconf.xml
./gconf/gconf.xml.schemas/system/gstreamer/%gconf.xml

Do NOT remove these however. They are base configuration templates for use with the GNOME configuration system. Removing them will break all Audio for GNOME applications.

The performance issues you are encountering are likely because ffmpeg is not being used, one of the other plugins is. ffmpeg is likely only the last resort failsafe.

Hmm. Well, I don't have any of those things to delete/edit/play with. Only thing I have in ~/.gconf is my Evolution configuration (can't wait until Openchange + Akonadi are ready for prime time!). I couldn't find anything else, either. Well, sort of. I did find

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~/.kde/share/config/gstreamerpartrc

Forgot I had kaffeine-gstreamer installed. But even though it's there, it's exclusive to Kaffeine (or at least that's the only thing I know of that looks to it). And I have no idea if I could take what's in that text file and place it somewhere Elisa, Phonon, or Gstreamer itself would look. Even then, the syntax is probably all kinds of wrong...

Only other thing I came up with was a warning message.

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jeffro@tandy400:~/.gconf> gst-launch-0.10 playbin uri="file:///home/jeffro/Video/[DB]_Bleach_206_[4AFFD916].avi"

(gst-launch-0.10:4386): GStreamer-WARNING **: Failed to load plugin '/usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcacasink.so': /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstcacasink.so: undefined symbol: caca_dither_bitmap

That same warning message was the only one that showed up when I ran

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tandy400:~ # gst-feedback

According to YaST, libgstcacasink.so is provided by gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base, which I have installed. According to ls, that library exists. Just to make sure, I reinstalled the package, but still getting the same warning message. I'll try and figure that out tomorrow.

You have a package version mismatch. Install all related packages ( GStreamer for instance ) from the same repository to avoid these errors.

every Gstreamer related package I have installed came from the Packman repo except for Phonon-backend-gstreamer (from the Factory: Desktop Build Service repo).

Could you try updating all GStreamer related packages to the latest version available from Packman?