DefaultMediaPlayer

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Our target should be to have a player that is easy to use and enables the user to easily browse/manage his/her collection. As collections tend to become bigger and bigger with hdd-space becoming cheaper the player should be able to handle large libraries with grace and should help the user to organize it.

Specifications for this cycle :
/Artwork   /DefaultMediaPlayer   /Xfce4.8  

Exaile vs. gmusicbrowser

Replace Exaile with gmusicbrowser as the default music (you can also think: media) player in Xubuntu Natty

  • Launchpad entry: Does not exist.

  • Release target: Natty

  • Contributors: Pasi Lallinaho, Simon Steinbeiß

  • Field of the spec: 'Default Applications' & 'Desktop Experience'

Summary

The specification is written to propose changing the default media player in Xubuntu.

Our current music player is Python-based Exaile. It is said that Exaile is the GTK+ equivalent for Amarok, the KDE/Qt media player.

The proposal for new music player is gmusicbrowser, a Perl-based media player suitable up to large collections (10k+).

Release Note

New default media player: gmusicbrowser (was: Exaile).

Rationale

A lot of work has been put into gmusicbrowser and making its layout/UI cleaner for the user by the Shimmer Project lately. The Shimmer Project has even set up a PPA for their improvements. The PPA can be found at Shimmer Project PPA @ Launchpad.

Exaile was partly chosen as the previous music player since Steve (SiDi) was working with it and acting as some sort of "liaison" for the app. That cooperation has now vanished.

Comparison between the two apps

Non-features

gmusicbrowser

Exaile

Good contact with responsive upstream

No direct contact with development team

Features

gmusicbrowser

Exaile

Clean layout

Rather clean layout

Many layouts to choose from, easily customizable

No easy way to customise layout

 Not able to stream music from internet, but to the internet (icecast)

Good streaming from the internet

Different backends to choose from (mplayer, gstreamer, mpg321)

gstreamer only

Basic support for external media (copy-to-mount-location)

Device support (iPod plugin)

Use cases

  • Explain which use cases your specification aims to answer to.
  • Add as many use cases as you think there are.
  • Also add use cases where the specification might have a negative impact, and try to quantify them compared to the positive impact ones.

The specification

Design

Our target should be to have a player that is easy to use and enables the user to easily browse/manage his/her collection. As collections tend to become bigger and bigger with hdd-space becoming cheaper the player should be able to handle large libraries with grace and should help the user to organize it.

Notes on the implementation

Extra maintenance work after the spec

Issues that need solving

Upstream

  • Streaming. This is WIP.

By the Xubuntu team

By the developer implementing the spec

Comments

Xubuntu/Roadmap/Specifications/Natty/DefaultMediaPlayer (last edited 2012-03-25 16:53:47 by nblzone-227-162)