GStreamer "Hottest Pick" 0.6.0 released[*] The GStreamer team is happy to announce our first ABI stable release series. The 0.6.x series of the GStreamer streaming-media framework. At this point in time GStreamer is fully functional for creating audio-based applications, as shown by applications such as gnome-sound-recorder, Rhythmbox and nautilus-media. Video-based applications still have some issues at this point, but we plan on solving those issues during the 0.6.x series in an ABI compatible way. We will also be releasing a development 0.7 release series, in which we will work on such things as the remaining video issues and the interactivity support which is needed for DVD menus and SWF (Flash). This means developers working on apps needing these services can use the 0.7 series for development and then enable 0.6 support as these additions optionally get backported to 0.6 once they are stable and work well. Thread issues and GStreamer Many of GStreamer's features relies heavily on threads. Unfortunately everything is not rosy in the Linux world of threads. If you have a glibc version installed compiled with i686 optimizations (which uses a different codepath than standard i386 glibc), there is a good chance you will experience thread-related crashes in gstreamer-based applications. There are a few workarounds to this available. * You can use an i386 glibc package instead. (Since this is the only one shipping with Debian, debian users do not experience this issue.) * You can also try running the gstreamer-based applications using the command-line option --gst-scheduler=opt, which invokes a newly created scheduler that does not use threads. This scheduler is very new however so you might encounter other issues when using it. Please report issues to our bugzilla. The GStreamer applications we ship all check for both gstreamer-0.6, gstreamer-libs-0.6 and gstreamer-play-0.6; if those aren't found the 0.7 version of those files are checked for. We suggest anyone making GStreamer-based apps do the same. We are starting to have a really nice collection of applications under development using GStreamer. If you are looking for something specific check out our applications status page: http://www.gstreamer.net/status/?category=2 Features * Pipeline based media architecture * Over 130 plugins * All parts interchangeable * Few dependencies, only glib, popt and libxml for core (libxml optional) * Python Language bindings * Good documentation * Will be widely deployed through bundling with GNOME 2.2 * Design catering also for applications needing low-latency * Highly portable, already running on most mainstream CPU's * Modular design and use of 3rd party best of breed libraries means no bloat * LGPL licensing lays no restrictions on application developers licensing. * Easy for applications to ship their own plugins to the core as needed * Compiles with both GCC and Forte compilers * Tested to run on Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris GStreamer Homepage More details on these features can be found on the project's website, http://gstreamer.net/. Download and build instructions: http://www.gstreamer.net/releases/0.6.0/ Support and Bugs We use Gnome's Bugzilla (http://bugzilla.gnome.org) for bug reports and feature requests. The "product name" is GStreamer (capital G). Please do the following before writing a bug report : gst-feedback &> feedback 2>&1 and attach the file "feedback" to your bug report, so that we have some information useful in the debugging process. Developers GStreamer is hosted on SourceForge. All code is in CVS and can be checked out from there. Interested developers of the core library, plug-ins, and applications should subscribe to the gstreamer-devel list. If there is sufficient interest we will create more lists as necessary. We are still looking for people with access to FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX, Irix and True64 that would be willing to try building and testing GStreamer. Patches fixing such problems are also more than welcome. Contributors to this release Patches to the core of Gstreamer * Wim Taymans <wim.taymans(AT)chello.be> * Erik Walthinsen <omega(AT)temple-baptist.com> * Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas(AT)apestaart.org> * David I. Lehn <dlehn(AT)vt.edu> * David Schleef <ds(AT)schleef.org> * Brian Cameron <brian.cameron(AT)sun.com> * Joshua N Pritikin <vishnu(AT)pobox.com> Plugins and Sample Applications * Julien MOUTTE <jmoutte(AT)electronic-group.com> * Cameron Hutchison <camh+gst(AT)xdna.net> * Ronald Bultje <rbultje(AT)ronald.bitfreak.net> * Steve Baker <stevebaker_org(AT)yahoo.co.uk> * Iain Holmes <iain(AT)prettypeople.org> * Jérémy Simon <jsimon13(AT)yahoo.fr> * Jan Schmidt <thaytan(AT)mad.scientist.com> * Daniel Fischer <dan(AT)f3c.com> * Martin Schlemmer <azarah(AT)gentoo.org> * Andrew Turner <zombie(AT)4free.co.nz> * Owen Fraser-Green <owen(AT)discobabe.net> * Leif Morgan Johnson <lmjohns3(AT)eos.ncsu.edu> * Benjamin Otte <in7y118(AT)public.uni-hamburg.de> Misc * Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus(AT)gnome.org> * Alp Toker <alp(AT)atoker.com> [*]: GStreamer is Hottest Pick in the UK Linux Format #36, out now !