Not long ago 4Front Technologies open sourced their OSSv4 system. OSSv4 is a much improved version of the old OSS sound system that used to be in the kernel. OSSv4 will also be the official new sound system for OpenSolaris. With OSSv4 being open source it became important to support it well in GStreamer and in GNOME. Due to this we at Collabora Multimedia have been working with 4Front to make sure everything works well. Tim-Philipp Muller has been working on some new OSSv4 elements for GStreamer for some time now with the goal being to make things like the GNOME mixer and so on works perfectly if you install OSSv4 on your linux or FreeBSD system. We are not there yet, but we are getting closer.

These plugins are currently in gst-plugins-bad, but once we get some wider testing of them we hope to move them to gst-plugins-good. A nice feature is that since the OSSv4 plugin doesn’t need OSSv4 installed to build the plugins will build on all linux systems. This means that they are very likely to be shipped as part of the GStreamer plugins coming with your distro and thus all you need to do to enable OSSv4 on your linux box is grab the OSSv4 package from 4Front.

Some things still need a little polish, so no screenshots at this time, but if you are using OSSv4 on your system please grab CVS gst-plugins-bad and report any issues you find to bugzilla.

Was just pointed to Chris Double’s blog entry about his work integrating GStreamer with the HTML5 media elements. Really great stuff Chris! I hope the linux distributions pick up these patches as soon as possible as it would be really sweet to have Firefox’s media handling integrated with the rest of the system.

And thanks to the MacOSX and Windows the nice Windows and MacOSX support in GStreamer maybe this could become a cross platform solution for Firefox.

Google extended the deadline for summer of code applications by a week today. This means that if you just returned from an easter vacation thinking f**k I just missed the application deadline, you can relax as the doomsday bell did not ring just yet.

We got some sweet applications for GStreamer SoC projects, but more would of course be welcome. Check out our student information page for how to apply. If you need ideas for project to do then you find some nifty ideas at the GStreamer SoC ideas page.

And for the harder than hardcore of you there are still opportunities for also submitting Dirac SoC proposals.

So get yourself a bankable checkpoint on your CV and do a GStreamer Summer of Code project this summer.

This is your chance to one day be able to say: Remember The Summer Of Code that I was a part of, We had so many dreams, And even a few of them came true it seems.

So Google has now opened the floodgates to this years Google Summer of Code with GStreamer and Dirac Schrodinger as happy participants.

So this is the year where you can get inspired by our wondrous GStreamer project ideas or Schrodinger ideas and join the elite world of multimedia hackery!

Not only that, but you can even come up with an idea all of your own

So ask yourself this; If not this year, then when? If not you, then who? If not our generation, then which generation?

So stop wasting time and start enrolling here.

Do not linger because Google close the gates on 31st of March!

So I am very happy to see that GStreamer this year is a Google Summer of Code organisation. And not only did GStreamer get approved, but Schrodinger also got its approval. A big thanks to Google and Leslie for this. There is a proposed task list both for GStreamer and for Schrodinger-Dirac. On a related note David Schleef got the new Schrodinger website up and running, and while it is still a bit bare on content we will start to migrate over any useful content left on the old site and at the same time have it re-direct to this new one.

So I hope to see a lot of student proposals for both GStreamer and Dirac/Schrodinger projects. And if you have an idea not on the current list of ideas do not let that discourage you from proposing something.

For people wanting to do GNOME or KDE applications using GStreamer I suggest you propose the project to both us and them, but make a note in the application that you have done so. Also note if you feel your primary need for mentorship will be on the GStreamer or GUI side of things. That way we can talk between ourselves on the mentoring organisations side of things and figure out what we can do.

So we have managed to put together a preliminary set of webpages for trying to get into this year’s Google Summer of Code. We already have a list of proposed
projects, but the list needs more work. Both in terms of details for the existing items and in terms of number.

Since we are doing this in our Wiki any who is interested in helping out with organizing Soc this year is welcome to join
in by editing the pages, adding information and suggestions.

Current GStreamer developers are especially recommended to check the list to sign up as mentors. Students can also mark their interest by adding a note with their name to the various proposals.

With the team lead by Thomas Davies at the BBC working hard for many years now on creating Dirac it is great to see the specification out. It was equally great to see David Schleef announce Schrodinger 1.0.0 at the end of last Month. Schrodinger is as most of you know a high performance implementation of Dirac in ANSI C. It is meant as a tool for people to be able to easily integrate Dirac support into their applications and systems. Which is also why it is available under very liberal licensing terms in the form of a GPL/LGPL/MPL/MIT quadruple license.

Anyway to celebrate the release of both the specification and the implementation we managed to put together and send out a press release for the Schrodinger project.

So once again congratulations to everyone involved, lets all work to get Dirac widely adopted. Personally I am hoping to that combination of Dirac video, FLAC audio in a Matroska container could be a killer combination to get started on mainstream adoption.