CodeinaUbuntuIntegrationSpec

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  • Launchpad Entry: codeina

  • Packages affected: libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0

Summary

This is the codec manager for the GStreamer framework, it concerns the following modules : * GStreamer plugins base utils library. * Codeina, the Fluendo codec manager.

Rationale

Fluendo provides a system to handle the situation where multimedia codecs are required for playback.

Use Cases

An end user tries to open a video or audio clip using the Totem movie player or Rhythmbox music player and a codec is missing to read the file. The end user needs assistance to understand why some codecs are not provided and to decide between various possible solutions to resolve that issue.

Scope

This is already partly implemented in the gstreamer-plugins-base module and currently points to synaptic package manager. The proposal aims to implement the complete system by introducing Codeina and configuring gstreamer-plugins-base to use it appropriately.

Design

Each time that a GStreamer enabled application tries to play a file, the autoplugger system will detect missing codecs and spawn a process with contextual information on what happened.

Codeina is then executed with those parameters, scans a providers directory and gather a list of available products to address the issue. A GUI will then come up to explain, in localized language, why this happened and show a list of products grouped by providers with some hints about wether the product can have legal concerns in some countries.

As soon as the user choose a product from a provider, the installation process will start and, upon completion, file playback will start again automatically providing smooth user experience.

Some products can have updates available, Codeina is launched at session startup, refreshes providers files from Internet (if available) and will then display a notification to inform the user that updates are available. This only apply to Fluendo products as package updates are managed directly by the Update manager for Ubuntu packages.

An icon is made available in the Application -> Sound & Video menu to launch Codeina and access Fluendo products directly to provide a way for returning users to install their products easily.

Implementation

Codeina is implemented in Python and embeds Mozilla to provide the e-commerce integration layer for commercial codecs.

Outstanding Issues

No outstanding issue identified so far, but this specification is in its early stages and not implemented yet, so please report here any problems foreseen/encountered while implementing/using this specification.

BoF agenda and discussion

Use this section to take notes during the BoF; if you keep it in the approved spec, use it for summarizing what was discussed and note any options that were rejected.


CategorySpec

CodeinaUbuntuIntegrationSpec (last edited 2008-08-06 16:23:20 by localhost)