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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: kplayer vs. kmplayer
From:       kiriuja <kde-devel () en-directo ! net>
Date:       2003-08-19 1:02:20
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On Dom 17 Ago 2003 08:45, Koos Vriezen wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Aug 2003, Martin Koller wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have seen, that there are 2 very similar applications,
> > one called kmplayer at http://www.xs4all.nl/~jjvrieze/ and
> > one called kplayer at http://sourceforge.net/projects/kplayer/
> >
> > My question is: Wouldn't it be beneficial if these 2 projects work
> > together to build one superb application for KDE ?
>
> Sure we could :). However these projects aren't that similar if you take a
> closer look at the features (I had this discussion before with the
> author of kumaplayer).
> KMPlayer has a main focus on embedding, like mplayer-plug/kaboodle. I've
> put much effort in making it play almost everything on the web, adding
> javascript binding to it etc. Last addition is a koffice plugin for video
> inside a presentation (not functional yet).
> It also tries to be more then just a frontend to mplayer, currently also
> mencoder/xine/ffmpeg (all three only partial implemented now, and ffmpeg
> is more a workaround for the s*cking v4l support of mplayer - will check
> xine version one day..).
>
> I think KPlayer is more an app like noatun, a full featured stand-alone
> media viewer.
> The only way I see an intergration now is that KPlayer would use
> libkmplayercommon or something similar as interface to mplayer. But I
> think Kiriuja wouldn't just like to give up on the current efforts. Also
> KPlayer seems to be quite pupular. And I must say it looks very impressive
> from the screenshots I've seen. (KMPlayer as a stand-alone app. has a very
> poor interface, anyone who want to improve it is very much welcome or
> indeed port/fork KPlayer for it)
> There should be done something about the name issue, I think. KMPlayer
> supporting more than mplayer now, I should think of a new name.
> Suggestions :) ?

Hi,

I agree with Koos that the while the two players have some things in
common, after all both are based on the same backend, they have taken
different directions. Like Koos said, KPlayer is more geared towards
the use as a standalone program. Indeed the goal is to have a full
featured media player, although it does not prevent it from getting
a KPart, as people keep asking for it all the time.

Having a single program or at least a single middle tier, a shared
library, is obviously a good idea, in principle, because it would
help avoid duplicate effort. However, it is not clear whether the
effort to make such a library would be more or less than the amount
of duplicate effort it would help avoid.

My experience shows that a lot of effort during the development
has to be spent on working around various MPlayer bugs, so I think
there is a fair amount of duplicate effort going on here, and having
a single library would certainly save quite a bit of time.

Inside KPlayer there is a clear separation between user interface
code and MPlayer interface code. The process classes are completely
GUI-less, and they provide a few features that go beyond a simple
wrapper around MPlayer's slave interface. For example, with the
current MPlayer it is not at all easy to figure out the corrent
time length of a media file. MPlayer's get_time_length/ANS_LENGTH
feature is very far from being reasonably useful. KPlayer is able
to correctly detect a file length with sub-second precision for
most (local) file types. Other examples are subtitle autoloading
and getting a list of available outputs and codecs. In general,
KPlayer makes extensive use of MPlayer's output, and will do even
more so in the future. I am sure KMPlayer's MPlayer interface has
its own useful features. So a hypothetical library would have to
have both sets of features, and if it is toolkit independent, it
may also include features from other programs, mplayerplug-in is
one example that comes to mind.

I would be willing to help if someone were to undertake such a
project, but I will not be able to do it myself. If and when we
have a library like that within reasonable time, then I think
we can talk about having a single program.

As far as naming, it entirely depends on the goals of the program
in question. When I was thinking about KPlayer becoming more than
a player in the future, I thought about a name like KDE Media
Center. But because the development resources are rather limited,
the current plan is for KPlayer to be just a media player focusing
on quality above all, so it will not be getting features like
encoding or broadcasting in the foreseeable future, unless someone
either implements them entirely on their own or gets some kind of
KPlayer-KMPlayer integration project under way.

Regards,

-- kiriuja
http://kplayer.sourceforge.net/

 
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