Pitivi still can not even do the simplest of many common editing tasks. Diva at least attempted to do some of them. How can Pitivi then validate the gnonlin design? You often speak of renewed efforts in various (very interesting) directions and things that are “almost” done. When will we finally see the results? It’s all promises so far.

When will webcam chats work in farsight and gossip? When will DVD support _really_ be there? When will Realmedia RTP streams _really_ work in Totem? When will Pitivi be an editor of interest to users rather than prophets? Subtitles still hang Totem rather often. Those are things that matter. My final point: when will GStreamer _really_ matter based on its _merits alone_? It’s been a year, and there’s still little to no user-visible progress compared to earlier versions. Those are the things that make people use totem-xine.

I’m not necessarily supporting Michal, and I agree with you that he’ll probably see as many - though different - bugs and shortcomings in MLT, don’t get me wrong. I’m just pricking through the PR and looking at features.

So, personally, for me to use PiTiVi, I want the Diva UI. MDK might have cr*cked up on his engine choices, but he has created the best UI for a major app for Linux — ever.

I would like PiTiVi to emulate it pixel by pixel too.

And I did read quite a lot of its code. Because it’s almost nothing. Which is fine. It’s in development. Unfinished. We understand!

But your blog makes it look as if this GNonLin is soon going to be the holy grail framework of video editing. Then please finish it.

Nor the changelog (frequency of changes) nor the current amount of support and features is anywhere near what a typical video editing session ‘for an amateur’ is going to require from this so-called ‘engine’.

Just as how Ronald puts it: promises promises and promises. Lots of PR and few value.

I can perfectly imagine that GNonLin doesn’t even come close to what MDK needs for his Diva project. Pitivi still can not even do the simplest of many common editing tasks.

You didn’t convince me, Christian. You probably didn’t convince a lot software developers. Probably not a single software developer with a little bit of experience in video & multimedia editing. Like MDK. The problem, I guess, is that we DO take a look at the code and supported features and NOT only at your blog.

The Eugenias of this world read your blog and go: oooh, cool engine. Waaaw. Nice story behind it! MDK cracked up on the Engine choice!! yeah yeah! But his UI is cooool! (insert more slashdot-style ranting here)

Please add value, then make such people think that way. It’s not helping people like MDK on making the right choices.

It’s helping them wanting to quit working on the project. Maybe MDK comes back from his adventure with a shitload of experience that he can put in your GNonLin thing? Maybe he’ll wrap it in a GSt-style API? Or do you prefer that he stops developing his project because now stupid comments from people (look at Eugenia’s comment) will make him think that he’s doing all this for a bunch of morons?

Value. Then speak.

Regarding DIVA and MDK, I’m not sure if he knew from the beginning that GStreamer was not ready for video editing but wanted to help it to become ready for it (like in Edward Hervey and Pitivi’s case), or if he just thought it was ready and then found out it isn’t. For how things have gone, I guess it’s the second case (and who knows if it’s been his own fault or if he thought so because the GStreamer people tried to “sell” it as a finished product).

In any case, MLT might not be perfect, but it’s already working with different video editors. The recently released Kdenlive 0.4 is a good example of it (in fact, even in this early state, it’s the best Free/Open Source non-linear video editor I’ve seen so far).

Good luck for Pitivi and Gstreamer anyway. I do believe that they are both going to be very important for Linux in the near future. Just let things go at it’s own rhythm and not try to make them go faster. People will be naturally adopting GStreamer as it becomes ready for each task. Until then, it’s good that apps out there use the best tool available (if there is a better tool available, that is).

Sure, its not 100% finished yet, and that has been made clear, but I fail to see how using yet another multimedia backend is going to make things better. GStreamer is an extensible audio and video platform, and I am positive it is the right choice for Diva.

It is important that PiTiVi and its lack of progress is not seen as a typical development use case for a GStreamer application. PiTiVi has had a rather painful history due to lack of developers and Edward concentrating on getting Gnonlin working. Not wanted to blow our own trumpet, but look at Jokosher - look what has been possible with GStreamer, Gnonlin and a fairly small development team.

Phillip - I think it is unfair to accuse Christian as a hype-machine - he regularly reports on things that are going on in the GStreamer world, in the same way you talk about tinymail. Sure, some stuff is new, or broken, but the GStreamer developers have made huge strides in the last year ramping up the stability, something I have personally witnessed with my involvement in Jokosher.

GStreamer is a good structural multimedia framework, and has a lot of potential. I would much rather see MDK help improve Gnonlin which would then have three major apps using it (Diva, Jokosher, PiTiVi). I can’t help but think that if MDK moves to a different framework, he will encounter as many problems. The grass always seems greener on the other side…

Jono

Just like how Gnonlin isn’t ready for an application like Diva, is tinymail not ready for an application like Evolution.

Which is why I very often mention that tinymail is for mobile devices and embedded appliances with a limited set of required functionality (but also a specific set, which is why I usually say that I have put a focus on these platforms).

Having that focus is important, in my opinion.

In my comment to this blog I wrote that we (or I) understand what “in development” means. Gnonlin is not yet ready for what Diva needs, which is fine. We thank you guys for wanting to do this library. It’s great that people work on things like this.

However.

It seems MDK decided that he wants a framework that is a little bit more mature than GStreamer + Gnonlin. If that is his decision then it’s not a design mistake if he picks another framework.

It just means that he’s planning to focus on other things besides framework development. Maybe Diva’s user interface? I don’t know. MDK knows and MDK decides about this. The GStreamer people nor me nor you do.

And I think he, being the Diva expert, made the right decision. So it was unnecessary to tell him that he made a wrong ‘design’ decision. IMHO.

That was the design mistake I talked about. Also considering the tone you have been using in your blog entries about Evolution I feel this criticism from you a ‘bit’ out of place.