ArmMediaPlayersUNE

Summary

The current video media client, totem, does not take effective advantage of ARM media processing capabilities or resize video well for presentation on netbook screens, and hence may detract from the overall ARM smartbook media experience. There have been several alternate media streaming applications proposed at UDS, which need to be investigated. Some are not in our repository currently. Related to this are problems with f-spot and Mono consuming battery life on ARM devices, and at least one of the options proposed may allow elimination of that application as well.

Release Note

To improve the user media experience on ARM netbooks and smartbooks, a new default media player has been selected.

Rationale

There are several issues involved. Some touch upon how to more optimally use the limited screen size scaling in full screen or near full screen media playback at normal playback frame rates. Others relate to using ARM v7 features to offer faster codec operations.

User stories

Playback full screen should appear full screen and scaled as necessary to achieve this whenever possible.

Assumptions

There are media players that work better.

Media Players

Specific issues include relatively low CPU/mem/disk power (target v7: > 384 mb / > 800 Mhz / > 4Gb / no 3d accell).

Screen resolutions may typically be 1024x600 and fast scaling will be needed to enable a full screen video experience.

Canola2

came up as a choice at UDS

http://openbossa.indt.org/canola/

Advantages:

Also touch-screen centric

Could also replace f-spot and rhythmbox (otherwise rhythmbox would likely be left alone, as no other strong options for ARM emerged for that alone)

Issues

Some work may be required for non-touch screen support

Does not support browser plugins. However, browser "embedded in a window" media requirements are different and may still be satisfied without compromising user experience using the existing totem/gstreamer plugins.

Effort

A minimum of a month to address ui issues and packaging, based on UDS estimate from bfiller.

Moblin Media Player

To fill in...

Music Players

Rhythmbox

Works on ARM. Would likely keep unless Canola2 replaces it.

Exaile

Python based, very active development, good feature parity.

Banshee

Currently does not work on ARM. Also has separate issue from Mono with battery life. Performance may still be poor even if it can be fixed.

Effort

If we choose canola2, we may have several months of effort in that.

If we do not choose canola2, we may find that we have to commit to a month or more of effort in Mono issues, or select alternatives that eliminate need for Mono entirely.

Risks

We may find either the Canola2 choice or trying to fix Mono for ARM may go past Lucid timeframe.

Implementation

Review and select an alternate media player. Package for main if not already in the archive. Modify the une seed for arm. Sounds simple, the above items suggest it is not!

UI Changes

Should cover changes required to the UI, or specific UI that is required to implement this

Code Changes

Code changes should include an overview of what needs to change, and in some cases even the specific details.

Migration

No known issues.

Test/Demo Plan

Full screen playback at 30fps of a reference media file.

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

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

CategorySpec

Specs/ArmMediaPlayersUNE (last edited 2009-12-01 23:43:13 by pool-72-75-130-247)